12 brilliant book adaptations to catch at the London Film Festival

The BFI London Film Festival isn’t just manna for movie lovers, it’s a feast for bookworms too. Of course, literary adaptations are always a major feature of any festival line-up, but this year brings a striking range of them. From copper-bottomed classics (Frankenstein, The Assistant) to modern gems (Hamnet, The Ballad of a Small Player), there’s something for every corner of BookTok. Novellas and short stories are represented, too, with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams and Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound on the programme. Here’s a shelf’s worth to look out for at the festival. 

NB There’s almost always a chance to grab last-minute tickets, including to previously sold-out screenings and events. Check the LFF website for the details and latest ticket availability.

H is For Hawk

Helen Macdonald’s 2014 memoir comes with a shelf full of awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for best British non-fiction. Claire Foy steps into the author’s shoes in a story of grief and goshawks that recount Helen’s grief for her dad and relationship with the bird of prey who helped her through. Brendan Gleeson co-stars as her dad.

5.30pm, Sunday Oct 12, Royal Festival Hall
8.30pm, Monday Oct 13, Curzon Soho Cinema
8.45pm, Monday Oct 13 October, Curzon Soho Cinema
12pm, Saturday Oct 18, Curzon Soho Cinema 

100 Nights of Hero 

Adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, a fresh twist on Middle Eastern folktales One Thousand and One Nights, Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero will be bringing down the curtain on the festival on Sunday, October 19. On the cast list? Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Amir El-Masry, Charli XCX, Richard E Grant and Felicity Jones.

The Ballad of a Small Player 

Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel about a gambling addict washing up in China has been compared with Graham Greene, but it has a corrosive romance all of its own. Conclave director Edward Berger and screenwriter Rowan Joffé are bringing it to the screen, with Colin Farrell seemingly perfectly cast as Lord Doyle, a washed-up cynic staking it all on the baccarat tables of Macao.

6pm, Thursday Oct 9, Royal Festival Hall
2.45pm, Friday Oct 10, Royal Festival Hall
12.35pm, Sunday Oct 12, Prince Charles Cinema

Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel Die, My Love loses the comma but none of its unruly power. It’s the Scottish director’s first movie since 2017’s You Were Never Really Here, and sees Jennifer Lawrence play a woman who surrenders to a feral maternal power while deadbeat husband (Robert Pattinson) sucks suds on the couch.

6pm, Friday Oct 17, Royal Festival Hall
3pm, Sunday Oct 19, Curzon Mayfair
11.30am, Saturday Oct 18, Royal Festival Hall

The Death of Bunny Munro

The LFF isn’t just movies, it’s TV too, and Sky’s six-part adaptation of Nick Cave’s second novel is making its bow at the festival. Matt Smith is a middle-aged lothario who embarks on a road trip across Sussex with his son (newcomer Rafael Mathé) after his wife’s suicide. Watch the first two episodes on the BFI big screen.

8.50pm, Monday Oct 13, BFI Southbank

The Thing with Feathers

Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers follows a widowed writer and father of two as he reflects on loss while working on a book about Ted Hughes. An adaptation lands at the festival with Benedict Cumberbatch as the dad and Meet Me in the Bathroom’s Dylan Southern behind the camera. Expect to leave with red eyes and a new-found appreciation for Crow.

6.10pm, Saturday Oct 11, BFI Southbank
3.30pm, Sunday Oct 12, Vue West End

The Assistant

Major props if Robert Walser's revered but half-forgotten semi-autobiographical 1908 novel features on your bookshelf. But Polish filmmaking duo Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal’s adaptation pushes this modernist classic into the bright lights of the LFF. It follows a put-upon clerk’s travails in the employ of an enthusiastic inventor. 

8.40pm, Wednesday Oct 15, ICA
12.50pm, Friday Oct 17, BFI Southbank

Hamnet 

Already a 2026 Oscar favourite and possibly the LFFs hottest ticket, Chloé Zhao’s interpretation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel about Agnes and William Shakespeare encompasses the biggest of themes: inconsolable loss, spirituality, art and creativity, the perils of fleas. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play literature’s first couple in this one. 

5.30pm, Saturday Oct 11, Royal Festival Hall
11.15am, Monday Oct 13, Royal Festival Hall 
5pm, Sunday Oct 19, BFI Southbank

The Chronology of Water

Kristen Stewart has an affinity for wounded souls grappling with their sense of identity. She’s played a few in them, and now she’s adapted and directed a drama about one: Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), an aspiring Olympic swimmer whose struggles to shake off the legacy of childhood abuse were charted in her 2011 memoir. 

8pm, Sunday Oct 19, BFI Southbank
8.45pm, Thursday Oct 16, Curzon Mayfair
6pm, Friday Oct 17, Vue West End

Frankenstein

Two things that need no introduction – Mary Shelley’s Romantic classic and Mexican monster devotee Guillermo del Toro – come together for a gothic horror that stops at the festival en route to Netflix. It’s been 115 years since Shelley’s misunderstood monster was first unleashed on the cinema screen. This time it’s Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi doing the literary lurching. 

5.45pm, Monday Oct 13, Royal Festival Hall
11.15am, Tuesday Oct 14, Royal Festival Hall
1pm, Wednesday Oct 15, BFI Southbank
5.45pm, Friday Oct 17, BFI IMAX

The History of Sound

Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor play two musicologists in love with folk music and each other in this slow cinema adaptation of New Englander Ben Shattuck’s short story. Living director Oliver Hermanus is a master at bringing a gorgeous, impressionistic filter to the most heartfelt tales and this one is no exception. 

6pm, Saturday Oct 18, Royal Festival Hall
11.30am, Sunday Oct 19, Royal Festival Hall

Train Dreams

We’re convinced that richly talented Aussie actor-filmmaker Joel Edgerton will pick up an Oscar for something one day. Could it even be for his performance as a railroad labourer in early 20th-century America. Critics have been using words like ‘mythic’ and ‘gorgeous’ about this adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella since it premiered at Sundance, so who knows?

6.15pm, Sunday Oct 12, Curzon Mayfair
3.20pm, Monday Oct 13, BFI Southbank

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