London Film Festival 2026 winners: Imperium takes Best Film, and where to watch the prize-winners

Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium has been named Best Film at the 70th BFI London Film Festival, as the BFI revealed its competition winners on Sunday 18 October to mark the close of this year's edition.

The Ukrainian director's film draws on archive footage shot by Italian cameramen to build a portrait of everyday life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The Official Competition jury, chaired by the American filmmaker Sam Pollard, described it as "an extraordinary film that explores the Soviet Union in the early 1970's from a rich archive".

The Sutherland Award, which recognises the best first feature, went to 9 Temples to Heaven by the Thai filmmaker Sompot Chidgasornpongse, a reflective drama about family, faith and mortality. The First Feature jury, led by Amir El-Masry, called it "an accomplished first feature paving his own path", and gave a special mention to Masc, from the British director Bertil Nilsson, which follows a young man drifting between temporary jobs and relationships as he searches for somewhere to belong.

In the Documentary Competition, the Grierson Award was won by Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land, which follows a multigenerational family in Jordan facing displacement and the loss of their cultural traditions. Sandhya Suri's jury praised it as "a beautifully observed portrait filmed with mastery and confidence", while also singling out Theo Rollason's Queer Edward II for a special mention. That film uses archive material to revisit Derek Jarman's 1991 film Edward II against the backdrop of the anti-LGBTQIA+ laws Britain introduced in the 1980s.

The Short Film Award went to Rahul Roye's Aman, the story of a trans man who discovers he is pregnant on the eve of his gender-affirming surgery, which explores gender identity, masculinity and fatherhood. Helen Simmons's jury admired its "finely drawn narrative" and also gave a special mention to Elizabeth Hobbs's Daughters of the Late Colonel, about two sisters coming to terms with the death of their controlling father.

For anyone hoping to see one of the winners straight away, Aman is the easiest to catch, as it is free to watch on BFI Player until 25 October. UK release details for the other winners were not part of the announcement, so it is worth keeping an eye out for them in cinemas and on streaming services over the coming months.

There is still one more set of prizes to come. Audience Award voting closes on Wednesday 21 October, with the Best Feature Film and Best British Discovery winners to be announced afterwards. Last year those awards went to Chloé Zhao's Hamnet and Yemi Bamiro's Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story.

With two of this year's honoured films telling LGBTQ+ stories, the festival has once again given queer cinema a prominent platform, as we explored when the 70th festival line-up of 251 titles was announced. Attention now turns to the audience vote and to which of these films make their way to UK screens next.