30/08/2012 - European premiere of Dickens adaptation rounds off programme

The 56th BFI London Film Festival (LFF October 10-21) will close with the European premiere of Mike Newell’s Great Expectations, adapted by David Nicholls (One Day) from Charles Dickens’ classic novel and starring Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irvine as Pip, alongside a stellar British cast.

Young orphan Pip is given a chance to rise from his humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Moving through London’s class-ridden world as a gentleman, Pip uses his newfound position to pursue the beautiful Estella, a spoilt heiress he’s loved since childhood. Yet the shocking truth behind this great fortune will have devastating consequences for everything he holds dear.

The film is produced by Number 9 Films and Unison Films, and has been financed by BBC Films, the BFI Film Fund, Lipsync Productions, Unison Films and Hart/-Lunsford Pictures.

Festival Director Clare Stewart said, “Visually ravishing and rippling with immediacy, this new adaptation of the classic novel, directed by Mike Newell provides a fitting conclusion to both the festival and London’s bicentenary celebrations of the life and work of Charles Dickens.”

Newell said, “I’ve tried to make a film that is true to the theatrical vividness, energetic characters and high colour that Dickens is loved for, while mining the deep seams of emotional cruelty and madness that underlie one of his darkest-shadowed stories.”

The festival opens with Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. The full programme will be announced September 5.