After the great success of last year's London Film Festival, the 2010 offering running from October 13-28 this year has a lot to live up to, as the BFI director Amanda Nevill stated in her opening speech at the Festival Press Launch this morning at the Odeon Leicester Square. After talking about the festival in general and putting a positive spin on the state of the British cinema industry following the recent fall of the UK Film Council, she handed over to Artistic Director Sandra Hebron who got down to what we'd all been waiting for - the LFF line-up.

The Opening Night and Closing Night Galas we already know - Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go and Danny Boyle's 127 Hours respectively. Joining those fine choices are plenty more great British fare - the American Express Gala (who have struck up a long term partnership with the BFI) will showcase Tom Hooper's The King's Speech, starring a ridiculously impressive award-winning cast of Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Jennifer Earle, Guy Pearce, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon. In this historical drama Firth plays Prince Albert, the second son of King George V who suffered from a nervous stammer during public speaking and was helped by therapist Lionel Logue (Rush), whose assistance became all the more crucial when Prince Albert took the throne. Also very much on everyone's radar will be Mike Leigh's Another Year, with Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen, amongst others, aiding Leigh in unraveling his talent for creating beautifully rounded characters living out everyday situations. We saw this at Cannes and it’s definitely one of Screenrush’s films of the year.

The LFF’s line-up is positively heaving with big names and hyped films, some of which have already been at Cannes and Venice so it’s great that they will be showcase in London as well. They include Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction starring Hilary Swank, Alejandroo Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful with Javier Bardem, George Clooney in The American, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and Matt Reeves’ Let Me In with Chloe Moretz.

The 30-minute showreel threw out many more delights; the touching story of an 84-year-old villager in Kenya taking advantage of free government schooling in Justin Chadwick’s The First Grader; a determined teenager desperate to set the mood with his girlfriend in Richard Ayoade’s Submarine; Isabelle Huppert as an upmarket prostitute laying out the menu for an overwhelmed customer in Jeanne Labrune’s Special Treatment; and a rallying team of Rwandan footballers in Debs Gardner-Paterson’s Africa United.

And the ones we’re most looking forward to? Well it’s such a delicious line-up that we can’t really say, but certainly two that we’ll make sure we see are Blue Valentine starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Willaims and It’s Kind Of A Funny Story with Zach Galifianakis. It’s going to be an absolutely jam-packed festival, and we really can’t wait for it to begin.

To see all the films in the London Festival line-up, visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff

Georgine Waller