Imperium Wins Top Prize at 70th London Film Festival
Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium has won best film at the 70th BFI London Film Festival.
The prizes were unveiled on Sunday 18 October as the festival drew to a close in London. Filmmaker Sam Pollard led the competition jury that chose the winner, Variety reported.
Imperium entered the festival as a 2026 title in Official Competition, the event's main contest for new features. The BFI had named it among the competition line-up in its August announcement, as listed by the BFI. Juries at festivals of this kind watch every contender together before settling on one winner. That selection put Loznitsa's film in the running for the top honour from the start.
The film reframes Soviet history through footage shot by Italian cameramen who recorded life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The BFI describes the project as built around that archive. That archive gives the story its structure. Viewers see a past era through the lenses of visitors, with material five decades old forming the core of a new cinema release. Documentary here means non-fiction filmmaking, shaped from real footage rather than staged drama.
The victory places Imperium in company familiar to festival followers. The BFI lists Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist from 2023 and Adam Elliot's Memoir of a Snail from 2024 among recent winners of the same competition. The reference gives a sense of the range the prize has recognised, from live-action drama to animation. This year's award extends that run into archive-led work.
Three other headline prizes celebrated new and shorter work. The Sutherland Award, which honours a first feature, went to Sompot Chidgasornpongse's 9 Temples to Heaven. A first feature means a director's debut in feature-length filmmaking. The Grierson Award, the festival's documentary prize, went to Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land, while the Short Film Award went to Rahul Roye's Aman, Variety reported.
What makes this stand out for general audiences is the simplicity of the idea behind the winner. Old footage, shot by outsiders, is cut into a fresh portrait of a closed system. It is a reminder that festivals can still crown quiet, archive-led films alongside bigger premieres.
Sunday's unveiling closed this year's festival. The full set of winners gives casual viewers a clear entry point for catching up.
