Hailed as the year of the strong woman it was thus apt that Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier won the Best Film Award at the BFI London Film Festival.

The 12-day-long event got off to a roaring start with Sarah Gavron’s intense drama Suffragette a shocking reminder of the horrendous sacrifices women made to get the right to vote and how far they still have to go in their fight for equality. 

The festival, however, closed with the European premiere of Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, a biopic of sorts of the visionary yet ruthless co-founder of Apple. With an incisive screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and a blinding performance by Michael Fassbender as Jobs we are given a fascinating insight into the narcissistic genius who revolutionised the personal computer industry and the mobile phone market.  

Davis Guggenheim’s compelling documentary He Named Me Malala centered on Malala Yousafzai who was shot by the Taliban for championing girls’ education in Pakistan. It is a powerful and inspirational portrait of this extraordinarily brave young girl and relentless campaigner who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at 17.

Cate Blanchett gives another inspired performance in the riveting political newsroom drama Truth. It depicts the controversy sparked by the 2004 CBS 60 Minutes report into president George W Bush’s military service which cost its veteran presenter Dan Rather (Robert Redford) and its leading news producer Mary Mapes played by Blanchett their careers.

Brooklyn is a gorgeous romantic drama set in the 1950s about a young woman (Saoirse Ronan) who leaves her small home town in Ireland to travel to New York to find her fortune. Ronan is totally captivating in Nick Hornby’s delightful and stirring adaptation of Colm Toibin’s best-selling novel.

Meanwhile in The Lady in the Van Maggie Smith — who appears to have cornered the market in playing grumpy old women — is magnificent as the destitute and cantankerous Miss Shepherd who spent 15 years living on Alan Bennett’s (Alex Jennings) Camden driveway. Bennett’s witty and razor sharp screen adaptation of his stage play is hilarious yet moving as it explores the themes of community spirit, loneliness and the co-dependence between writer and subject.  

Trumbo is a poignant yet hugely entertaining biopic about US screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) who was one of the “Hollywood Ten” blacklisted for refusing to testify before a congressional committee investigating communist presence in the film industry in 1947.

Cranston gives a cracking performance as Trumbo who ironically won two Oscars while being blacklisted. The film takes a wonderful look at Hollywood in its heyday and the hypocrisies of the time.  

Amongst the weird and offbeat offerings this year was Evolution — an eerie coming of age tale about a 10-year-old who slowly uncovers the sinister realities of life while on a remote island populated only by women and young boys. All I will say is that it helps to know the reproductive cycle of starfish to comprehend this surreal horror which features some of the most beautifully shot underwater scenes.

The Witch is an impressive directorial debut by Robert Eggers — deservedly named best first feature. It is a bleak and terrifying depiction of a family in New England torn apart by sorcery, hysteria years before the Salem witch trials.  

What would have rounded off this strong women-led LFF nicely is Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne — but it wasn’t to be.

Review by Maria Duarte