Skip to content 
A Screenscope Guest Entry by Esther
Last year, I was unable to go to the London Film Festival because my life with being taken over by excruciatingly painful accounting exams. Thankfully, those exams are now over. So, this year I promised myself that LFF 2025 would be my redemption arc. I think I kept that promise, having watched 3 films ranging from pretty good to out of this world. Read on to find my account of all the buzz and excitement of LFF 2025!
Mad Bills To Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) – 15/10/2025
At 24 years old, having a baby would be my worst nightmare. So, when 19 year old Rico (played by Juan Collado) loudly proclaims to his mother (Yohanna Florentino) and sister (Nathaly Vavarro) that he’s going to be a father, I knew that I’d be confronted with feelings of discomfort as I watched two teens prepare for a baby that they were clearly not ready for. At this point, Rico is living at his mum’s house, without a job and selling ‘Nutties’, a type of homemade alcoholic punch on the beach to make money. However, on the discovery of his girlfriend Destiny’s (Destiny Checo) pregnancy, hedecides that it’s time to step things up.
Rico first recruits a pregnant Destiny to help him sell ‘Nutties’, but quickly realises that they are not making nearly enough to raise a baby. He gets a job at a fishmonger but quickly loses said job. Soon after, he is arrested for not paying for a train ticket. It seems like all Rico’s efforts are in vain, like he’s trying to be better for his future child but lacks the ambition and drive to actually do so. The film is shot from a low angle. Almost like a small child is peering into each scene from the outside. Maybe this is a nod to the idea that Rico is not as grown as he thinks he is. Rico’s immaturity and naivetytowards what it takes to actually be a present parent is seen in the intimate discussions he has with Destiny. He seems reluctant to take care of the child (who hasn’t even been born yet by the way)when Destiny expresses her desire to go to university. Instead, he offers up his mother as free childcare and loudly and wrongly spouts anti-vaccine rhetoric, failing to realise that if the child doesn’t get a vaccine, then they wouldn’t be able to go to school. Something that is clearly not in his future child’s best interests.
The dialogue in this film feels so authentic. Probably, due to the fact that a lot of it was improvised. Florentino and Vavarro give stellar performances and the arguments they have mirrored those found in every home you walk past on the street. There was a naturalism to the dialogue that I really enjoyed. In the post film QnA, the director (Joel Alfonso Vargas) explained how first and foremost this specific story started with that of his community. This includes his siblings, his friends and his neighbours and we saw this in the authenticity of the dynamics of the characters. I was particularlyimpressed when I found out that this film was made off the back of the director’s senior thesis. Lack of resources and financial restrictions considered, this is the sort of independent film that makes me excited for the future of cinema.
Die My Love – 17/10/2025
This festival day began with multiple bus terminations, a 40-minute frenzied speedwalk from my work to Southbank and a heated argument with a girl who sat in my seat. And thanks to its maximalist soundscape, the beginning of Die My Love opens equally as chaotically.
‘Die My Love’ is a tactfully done adaptation of the Ariana Harwicz book of the same name. Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are a loved-up couple who move into Jackson’s uncle’s former home. The loved-up couple have sex. And I mean a lot of it. Like all the time. Even more unsurprisingly still, Grace quickly falls pregnant. However, with the birth of their baby, comes the death of their sex life – or at least the one they have with each other. The newfound pressure and loneliness of motherhood combined with a condom found in Jackson’s glove box mean that Grace quickly descends into what the viewer believes to be post-natal psychosis. It begins with the neglect of their home but quickly progresses into Grace’s total loss of self before culminating in her jumping out of a moving car, landing her in a mental institution.
Whilst we the viewer see how Grace’s psychosis is manifesting in a physical sense, Ramsey’s surrealism also allows us to see the effect that the psychosis is having on the intimacies of Grace’s mind. Grace regularly hallucinates. She sees a man (LaKeith Stanfield), in which she uses to satisfy the sexual desires that Jackson is no longer fulfilling at home. Unfortunately, we don’t see a lot of Stanfieldoutside of his role as Grace’s plaything and he has one line. There is definitely something to be said here about the reduction of Black men in art to mere objects with no care for the interiors of their own minds, desires or motives.
All in all, I think that ‘Die My Love’ is a very interesting depiction of the horrors of motherhood. If you are interested in the film’s content, I highly recommend ‘Witches’, a highly insightful Netflixdocumentary on the same topic.
My Father’s Shadow – 18/10/2025
‘My Father’s Shadow ‘was definitely my most anticipated watch of the festival. This screening was fresh off the back of the announcement that it would be the UK’s submission for Best international feature at the Oscars. The first time a Nigerian film has ever been submitted. The director Akinola Davies Jr had been on my radar for a while, after I went to a screening of his short film, ‘Rituals: Union Black’ at Sommerset house during the summer. That short is incredible by the way, I encourage everyone to watch it!
‘My Father’s Shadow’ follows two brothers, Akin (Godwin Egbo) and Remi (Chibuke Marvellous Egbo) as they go on a trip with their dad, Folarin (Sope Dirisu) across Lagos. On a day to day, Folarinworks in a Lagos warehouse, whilst the boys live with their mum in their village home. This emotional distance, caused by the spatial distance of their father relocating for work, is closed on this journey, allowing the two boys to learn more about him. They learn that he is tenderly referred to as ‘Kapo’ by uncles working in the warehouse and that this warehouse hasn’t paid him in months.
Just as the young boys are in the process of discovering their father, they are also discovering Lagos. They see the polo horses roaming the streets and the National Theatre that their mum would spend her youth attending. The boys roam an empty amusement park and are shocked to see a whale washed up on the sand when they go to the beach. As they journey, it becomes clear that the boys are angry with their father’s absence in their lives and he analogises that those who love them the most, like God, are rarely physically there. This begs the question of how much a person must love if they are ultimately absent in death.
Set against the backdrop of the 1993 presidential elections, we hear whispers and see glimmers of rebel work that Folarin may be involved in. I ask my dad about MKO Abiola’s presidential run later that evening and he recounted the hope for a Nigeria free from a military rule that was felt at the time; a hope that you feel as you watch the film.
Overall, I really enjoyed the films I watched at LFF this year. Catch ‘Mad Bills to Pay’, ‘Die My Love’ and ‘My Father’s Shadow’ as they release in UK cinemas over the next few months!
