Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium took the Best Film Award at the closing ceremony of the 70th BFI London Film Festival on October 18. The jury, led by documentary filmmaker Sam Pollard, cited the film's breadth and emotional perspective.
Imperium is assembled entirely from archival footage shot by Italian cinematographers in the Soviet Union between 1970 and 1973, preserved by Rome's Audiovisual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement. The film runs 175 minutes and carries no narration. It moves outward from Moscow through Central Asia, Georgia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine, and makes no editorial comment on what it shows.
Loznitsa, a Ukrainian filmmaker of Belarusian origin born in 1964 and based in Germany, has built a body of work around Soviet-era archives and the aftermath of institutional violence. His previous archival documentaries include Blockade (2005), State Funeral (2019), and Babi Yar. Context (2021). His fiction feature Donbass (2018) won him the Un Certain Regard Best Director prize at Cannes. Imperium had its world premiere in Venice before arriving in London.
The Sutherland Award for First Feature went to Sompot Chidgasornpongse's 9 Temples to Heaven, about a grandmother's multigenerational pilgrimage. Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land, following a displaced Palestinian Bedouin family in Jordan, won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary. The Short Film Award went to Rahul Roye's Aman. Audience voting closes October 21.
The 70th LFF screened 251 films from 88 countries across twelve days.
