Sergei Loznitsa’s Imperium has won the Best Film Award at the 70th BFI London Film Festival. The film is built from archive footage of everyday life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The British Film Institute announced the London Film Festival 2026 winners on Sunday 18 October, the closing day of the festival, which ran from 7 October. Prizes also went to a South-east Asian family drama, a documentary filmed in Jordan and a short about a trans man facing an unexpected pregnancy.
London Film Festival 2026 winners at a glance
Four juries chose the winners of the festival’s competitive sections:
- Best Film (Official Competition): Imperium, directed by Sergei Loznitsa
- Sutherland Award (First Feature Competition): 9 Temples to Heaven, directed by Sompot Chidgasornpongse
- Grierson Award (Documentary Competition): Concrete Land, directed by Asmahan Bkerat
- Short Film Award: Aman, directed by Rahul Roye
Special mentions went to Bertil Nilsson’s Masc in the first feature section, Theo Rollason’s Queer Edward II in the documentary section and Elizabeth Hobbs’s Daughters of the Late Colonel in the short film section.
Why Imperium won
Imperium is a Germany-France-Italy-Lithuania co-production. Loznitsa, known for reconstructing history from archive film, assembled it from material shot by Italian cameramen who filmed life across the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The news site Meduza reported that he found the footage at an audiovisual archive of the workers’ movement in Rome. The film runs to about three hours, according to the culture site ShortList.
The Official Competition jury was led by the director Sam Pollard, with the filmmaker Mariano Llinás and Julie La Bassiere of DDA. It called Imperium “richly evocative and emotionally engaging on all levels”. The jury praised the film for showing a rarely seen picture of a socially and culturally diverse country in the years before the Soviet Union broke apart.
Imperium beat nine other films in the Official Competition. They included Carol Morley’s British entry 7 Miles Out, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Irish-British co-production Act 3, and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Look Back.
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The other prizes
The Sutherland Award for the best directorial debut went to 9 Temples to Heaven, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s first fiction feature. ShortList describes it as following a family on a one-day trip to nine Buddhist temples. The jury, led by the actor Amir El-Masry, highlighted its striking visuals and its meditative, spiritual tone. The same jury gave a special mention to Masc, which it said marked the arrival of a distinctive new British filmmaker.
The Grierson Award for documentary went to Concrete Land, Asmahan Bkerat’s first feature as director. The BFI describes it as an intimate portrait, spanning several generations, of a family resisting displacement in Jordan, and ShortList reports that it was filmed over eight years. The documentary jury, chaired by the director Sandhya Suri, also gave a special mention to Queer Edward II, an all-archive film about the making of Derek Jarman’s Edward II.
In the short film section, the jury led by the writer and producer Helen Simmons chose Aman. The jury praised its convincing characters and the way it declines to give neat answers to the questions it raises. After the awards, the BFI made the film free to watch on BFI Player until 25 October.
Audience Awards still to come
Festival-goers could vote for the LFF Audience Awards until Wednesday 21 October. The BFI said the winners of Best Feature Film and Best British Discovery would be announced later. Last year the audience prizes went to Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and Yemi Bamiro’s documentary Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story.
Why it matters
The festival also gives audiences an early look at films heading to UK cinemas in the coming months. This year’s edition opened with Elsinore and closed with the UK premiere of The Debut. Both are due in UK cinemas in early 2027, according to the cinema advertising company Digital Cinema Media.
The jury winners may be harder for audiences to catch. ShortList reported that it could find no London screenings scheduled for Imperium or 9 Temples to Heaven immediately after the festival, and that Imperium was heading to New York’s Museum of Modern Art for its North American premiere on 23 October.
Four days before the awards, the BFI also named four emerging UK directors, Rich Felgate, Olive Nwosu, Imran Perretta and Rachel Taparjan, as winners of the 2026 BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards. Each receives £20,000.
For earlier festival coverage, see our report on Steve McQueen’s Blitz opening the 2024 festival.
Sources: BFI, Competition winners announced at 70th BFI London Film Festival (18 October 2026); BFI, Official Competition films announced for 70th BFI London Film Festival (17 August 2026); Meduza, Loznitsa’s Imperium wins Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival (19 October 2026); ShortList, London Film Festival award winners announced (19 October 2026); Digital Cinema Media, 2026 BFI London Film Festival round-up (26 October 2026); BFI, Winners announced at the 2026 BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards (14 October 2026); BFI, Press releases 2026 (accessed 28 October 2026).
