8 - 19 October. Now in it's 58th year, the BFI film festival once again rolls out it's red carpet ready for this year's rich and diverse selection of films and events.

Introducing the finest new British and international films, The BFI film festival offers a compelling combination of red carpet glamour, engaged audiences and vibrant exchange. The Festival provides an essential profiling opportunity for films seeking global success at the start of the Awards season; promotes the careers of British and international filmmakers through its industry activities and awards line-up and positions London as the world’s leading creative city.

The Festival will screen a total of 245 fiction and documentary features, including 16 World Premieres, 9 International Premieres, 38 European Premieres and 19 Archive films including 2 Restoration World Premieres. There will also be screenings of 148 live action and animated shorts. A stellar line-up of directors, cast and crew are expected to take part in career interviews, master classes, Q&As and other special events.

This year's BFI London Film Festival kicks off with Alan Turing drama The Imitation Game and finishing with David Ayers' tank drama Fury. But what about the days in between? Well, folks, there are certainly some very tasty films and potential Oscar contenders for you to see.

The Festival programme is organised into categories clustered around the themes of Love, Debate, Dare, Laugh, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Sonic and Family – an approach designed to help Festival-goers find the films that appeal the most to them and to open up the Festival for new audiences.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN LOVE

Love is strange, and cinema reaps the fruit of its strangeness. The Love Gala is the European Premiere of Alan Rickman’s sophomore feature A Little Chaos. Other titles in this section include: Benoît Jacquot’s 3 Hearts starring Charlotte Gainsbourg; Daniel Ribeiro’s romantic tale of the joys and woes of young love, The Way He Looks; Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange starring Alfred Molina and John Lithgow as life-long lovers; the European Premiere of Shonali Bose’s portrait of a Punjabi teenage girl Margarita, with a Straw; a new adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s classic Madame Bovary directed by Sophie Barthes; the World Premiere of Corinna McFarlane’s Silent Storm starring Andrea Riseborough and Damian Lewis; Susanne Bier’s Serena starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and the European Premiere of BAFTA-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Matthews’ debut feature X + Y.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN DEBATE

Debate presents films that rush headfirst and unafraid into some of the stormiest issues of the day. This year’s Debate Gala is the European Premiere of Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater starring Gael Garcia Bernal and based on the real-life ordeal of London-based journalist Maziar Bahari. Other highlights in this section include: the European Premiere of Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel about an American student charged with the murder of her British housemate; the World Premiere of Tom Harper’s House of Commons-set political thriller War Book; Gabriel Mascaro’s haunting tale of the effects of climate change on a coastal community in Brazil, August Winds; Annalet Steenkamp’s documentary about the four generations of her Afrikaner family I, Afrikaner; Dieudo Hamadi’s National Diploma following a group of Congolese high schools students preparing for their exams; Steve James’ newly restored 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams about the ultra-competitive world of college basketball; and Shira Geffen’s Self Made and Eran Riklis’ Dancing Arabs which both explore life on either side of the Palestinian-Israeli divide.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN DARE

In Dare you’ll find cinema’s troublemakers and boundary pushers, with films for those who take their movies strong, no sugar. The Dare Gala is Xavier Dolan’s Mommy which jointly won the Jury Prize in Cannes earlier this year. Other highlights in this strand include: Jean-Luc Godard’s first foray into 3D, Goodbye to Language which jointly won the Jury Prize in Cannes in May; New Queer Cinema alumnus Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard starring Eva Green and Shailene Woodley; the World Premiere of Rebecca Johnson’s Honeytrap based on the 2008 case of Samantha Joseph, dubbed the ‘honeytrap killer’; Duane Hopkins’ social melodrama Bypass; Aleksei German’s black and white epic Hard to Be a God completed by his wife and son following German’s death in 2013; and Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini starring Willem Dafoe as the Italian filmmaker.

FILM HIGHLIGHS IN LAUGH

This year’s laugh crop tread potentially treacherous terrain that some might consider no joke. This year’s Laugh Gala is Wild Tales, a delirious black comedy directed by Damián Szifron with Augustín and Pedro Almodóvar as producers. Other titles in this strand include: Director-writer-star Desiree Akhavan’s fearless feature debut Appropriate Behavior; Hungary’s most innovative and controversial director György Pálfi’s new film Free Fall; the International Premiere of Justin Simien’s razor-sharp satire Dear White People; Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’ delicate and heart-warming comedy Land Ho!; Josh Lawson’s whip-smart sex comedy The Little Death; Emilio Martínez-Lázaro’s Spanish Affair; and John Boorman’s semi-autobiographical film, Queen and Country.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN THRILL

The Thrill strand covers noir, neo-noir, sci-fi, pulp, crime, action and adventure in a programme that’s as sure to inspire wanderlust as it is to set your pulse racing. The Gala presentation for this strand is Kristian Levring’s The Salvation, a gripping tale of revenge set in the Old West starring Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green. Other highlights in this section include: Diao Yinan’s murder mystery and Berlin winner Black Coal, Thin Ice; the European Premiere of Toa Fraser’s thriller The Dead Lands made entirely in the Maori language; Michaël R. Roskam’s The Drop starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and the late James Gandolfini; the European Premiere of Kriv Stenders’ boldly enjoyable comedy thriller Kill Me Three Times starring Simon Pegg; the World Premiere of Tom Green’s Monsters: Dark Continent, a sequel to Gareth Edwards’ 2010 debut Monsters; and Andrew Hulme’s crime thriller, Snow in Paradise.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN CULT

In the Cult strand, you’ll find a curious selection of films guaranteed to provoke, excite and take you entirely off guard. Welcome to the weird side. The Cult Gala is the International Premiere of Jacob Cheung’s lavish wuxia epic The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom starring Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing. Other highlights in this strand include: Mark Hartley’s latest celebration of exploitation films Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films; David Robert Mitchell’s remarkable shocker It Follows; the European Premiere of British director Oliver Blackburn’s latest horror Kristy; Carter Smith’s ethereal coming-of-age tale Jamie Marks Is Dead; Sion Sono’s Yakuza gangster flick-cum-hip hop musical Tokyo Tribe and the World Premiere of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s striking debut The Town That Dreaded Sundown inspired by the 1976 classic of the same name.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN JOURNEY

Whether it’s the journey or the destination, here are films to transport you and shift your perspective. This year’s Journey Gala is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s extraordinary Winter Sleep which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. Other titles in this section include: African Metropolis, a collection of six short films that explore the complexity of African urban life; Rolf de Heer’s Charlie’s Country; Writer-Director David Oelhoffen’s Far from Men featuring Viggo Mortensen, Fatih Akin’s The Cut starring Tahar Rahim; Israel Horovitz’s My Old Lady starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas; 18 different filmmakers including Warwick Thornton, Justin Kurzel and a debut by Mia Wasikowska contribute to an expansive adaptation of Australian author Tim Winton’s The Turning starring Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne and Hugo Weaving; the World Premiere of Bryn Higgins’ Electricity; and the World Premiere of Gerry Fox’s Marc Quinn – Making Waves documenting one year in the life of the artist Marc Quinn.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN SONIC

This year’s Sonic Gala is Peter Strickland and Nick Fenton’s Björk: Biophilia Live, a concert film capturing the extraordinary closing night performance of Björk’s Biophilia project at London’s Alexandra Palace last year. Other highlights in this strand include: the European Premiere of James Marcus Harvey’s Austin to Boston about a modern music tour, done the old fashioned way; One9’s documentary Nas: Time Is Illmatic about one of the most influential and important records in hip hop; the European Premiere of Alan Hicks’ Keep On Keepin’ On about the relationship between legendary Jazz trumpet player Clark Terry and his protégé Justin Kauflin; Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, a fictionalised account of the French house boom that spawned Daft Punk, Michael Obert’s Song from the Forest that explores one man’s quest to find and record the music and sound of the remotest parts of the African jungle, Fenar Ahmad’s Flow, a portrait of Copenhagen’s hip-hop scene; and a Bug Special: Full Time Hobby devoted to the 10th anniversary of the independent London record label.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS IN FAMILY

This year’s Family section has titles from all over the world to suit all ages and tastes, and the Family Gala is the European Premiere of Song of the Sea, director Tomm Moore’s sophomore feature following his Oscar-nominated debut The Secret of Kells. Other highlights are the International Premiere of Xavier Picard’s Moomins of the Riviera a glorious animated tale of Tove Jansson’s much-loved characters released in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth; the World Premiere of Christian De Vita’s animated family tale Yellowbird 3D; Jon Wright’s British sci-fi adventure Robot Overlords; Chan Hyung-Yun kooky animated love story The Satelltie Girl and Milk Cow; and Martin Miehe-Renard’s teen drama The Contest - To the Stars and Back. They will be showing the UK’s first animated feature, Animal Farm (1954) based on George Orwell’s novella, and directed and produced by John Halas and Joy Batchelor.

There will be a selection of original and innovative short films and animation that will captivate audiences young and old, presented across the Festival strands. There will also be the Treasures strand that brings recently restored cinematic riches from archives around the world to the Festival in London and the Experimenta stand showcasing a dazzling collection of artists’ moving image work. Wow!