The 57th BFI London Film Festival has today announced that the European Premiere of Sony’s Captain Phillips will launch the proceedings on Wednesday 9th October at London’s Odeon Leicester Square. The event is expected to be attended by the film’s director, Academy Award ® nominee Paul Greengrass and the protagonist, two- time Academy Award ® winner Tom Hanks.
Captain Phillips is director Paul Greengrass’s explortion into the doomed U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009. Described as a blend of the best pulse-pounding thrillers combined with a complex portrait of the myriad effects of globalization, the film centres on the exchanges between the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), and his Somali counterpart, Muse (Barkhad Abdi) as they both find themselves having to pay the human toll for economic forces completely out of their control.
The screenplay for the feature film was written by by Billy Ray (The Hunger Games and attached to write for the upcoming 24: Live Another Day series) based upon Captain Phillips own book, “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea” which he wrote in collaboration with Stephan Talty.
Commenting of today’s announcement, BFI Head of Exhibition and Festival Director Clare Stewart said:
“We are thrilled to be opening the BFI London Film Festival by welcoming Paul Greengrass – one of the great supporters of the BFI and British film – back to London for the European premiere of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. Our Festival audiences will be captivated by Greengrass’s virtuoso filmmaking; CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is an intense, high-stakes drama, focusing on two men forced onto a collision course by global political forces much larger than themselves. Featuring spellbinding performances by Tom Hanks and four Somali-American actors (Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdirahman and Mahat M. Ali), we are excited to be presenting this film as our Opening Night Gala.”
The 57th BFI London Film Festival runs from Wednesday 9th October through Sunday 20th October with the entire programme set to be announced on Wednesday 4th September.
Further to the European premiere Sony will distribute Captain Phillips across the UK on the 18th of October, 2013. We’ll leave you with the official international trailer for the film.
