The Origin: a prehistoric horror with a modern-day message

Anna Cafolla selects page-turners to spook and satiate the senses, from Jonathan Nunn’s London food odyssey to Philippa’s Snow’s analysis of self-injury as entertainment, with a healthy dose of sexy salaciousness thrown in via Annie Ernaux.

BFI London Film Festival: techno gets the definitive documentary it deserves, in a brilliant portrait of the genre’s Black pioneers.

In Episode Two of Face-to-Face, the writers discuss punk, grime and shocking the literary establishment.

BFI London Film Festival: director Nikyatu Jusu on her Sundance-winning horror and the secret to making a proper scary film.

BFI London Film Festival: something terrifying is stalking cave people in an inspired British debut. Yes, like the historical setting, it’s behind you…

Elsewhere on THE FACE, discover the lowdown on 3-MMC, the party drug of the moment, this month's best DJ mixes, films with the best slogan T-shirts and the young cricketers calling out racism in their sport.

This week’s newsletter is curated by Grace Barber-Plentie, a programmer for the BFI London Film Festival. Below, she selects three upcoming highlights from the London Film Festival, running until 16th October in cinemas around the UK, and on BFI Player until 23rd October. Dig in!

Directed by Clea DuVall and with an entirely LGBTQIA+ creative team, High School is an intimate coming-of-age show depicting the lives of lesbian twin sister musicians Tegan and Sara. Perfect for fans of shows like My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks, the show is a perfect time capsule of the ’90s grunge scene whilst still feeling vital and refreshing now.

This gorgeous debut from Zia Mohajerjasbi follows a day in the life of Robel, a teenage boy who embarks on an odyssey across a rapidly gentrifying Seattle whilst coming to terms with the recent loss of his father.

Multi-disciplinary artist Martine Syms makes her feature-length debut with this hallucinogenic, hilarious depiction of the experiences of a young African-American woman on her final day at a prestigious art school.