The London Film Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary with a packed 16-day edition that opens next Wednesday night with Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and closes on November 2nd with Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, starring Brad Pitt, Gael García Bernal and Cate Blanchett.

Whitaker will be participate in the festival's public interviews, as will Richard Linklater, Tim Burton, Dustin Hoffman and producer Christine Vachon. Directors Paul Verhoeven and John Cameron Mitchell will give masterclasses.

The only Irish feature film among the 180 on the programme is writer-director Niall Heery's engaging Small Engine Repair, featuring Iain Glen, Steven Mackintosh, Stuart Graham and Laurence Kinlan. Showing with it at the festival is Chicken Soup, a short film directed by London-based Dubliner Farah Abushwesha. Irish representation at the festival also includes four short films: Walkman (directed by Alexandra McGuinness), Tell It to the Fishes (William Sinclair), Changes (Lorcan Finnegan) and Stars (Eoghan Kidney). www.lff.org.uk