Sam Pollard and Amir El-Masry are among those tapped to head up the BFI London Film Festival competition juries this year.
Pollard will preside over the event’s official competition jury, which will select the winner of the best film award. His decades-spanning career includes Peabody and Emmy Awards, an Academy Award nomination and the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award. Pollard’s recent directing credits include Tutu, which won the Peace Film Prize at this year’s Berlinale, as well as I Was Born This Way (2025), The League (2023), South to Black Power (2023), Citizen Ashe (2021) and MLK/FBI (2020).
Pollard is joined by Argentine filmmaker and writer Mariano Llinás (The Life of Jorge Luis Borges, The Flower) and Julie La Bassiere, chief strategy officer at DDA Global. “When I was asked to be the jury president for the London Film Festival, I was very surprised,” said the filmmaker on Wednesday. “I have been a jury member at other festivals but to be asked by the London Film Festival leaves me over the moon and very excited to weigh in on the films we will be asked to screen.”
The first feature competition (Sutherland Award) jury will be headed up by British-Egyptian actor and producer Amir El-Masry. El-Masry won a Scottish BAFTA for his performance in Limbo and named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit in 2020. His recent screen work includes the Naseem Hamed biopic Giant and Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero. The star is joined by Filipino independent film producer and former schoolteacher Alemberg Ang (Moonglow) and Rosa Bosch, an international film sales, distribution, and awards strategy executive and AMPAS member.
Leading the jury selecting the winner of the Grierson Award for the documentary competition is British-Indian writer Sandhya Suri, whose narrative fiction debut Santosh was shortlisted for the Oscars and won the BIFA for best screenplay. Suri originally made her debut with the 2005 documentary I For India (which played at the Sundance Film Festival) and is now working with BBC Film on a J.G. Ballard adaptation. She is joined by Kate Fitzpatrick, senior programmer at Melbourne International Film Festival, and Andee Ryder, a BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning film producer.
The short film competition jury is led by producer, writer and Erebus Pictures co-founder Helen Simmons. Her producing credits include the BAFTA-nominated Hoard, the 2025 LFF closer 100 Nights of Hero and Berlinale Crystal Bear winner Last Swim. She also co-wrote and co-directed the Méliès Award-winning short Measure.
Simmons is joined by New York Times Critics’ Pick and Sky Arts breakthrough award nominee Leo Reich, a comedian and creator of forthcoming Channel 4 and A24 series It Gets Worse. Joining them is script editor, story consultant and executive producer Jack Casey (Wren Boys, White Girl), who is also a story consultant on Black Church Bay, which screens at this year’s LFF.
“We are delighted to share our 2026 competition titles with audiences and our esteemed jury members,” said BFI London Film Festival Kristy Matheson. “Our competition films bring together an extraordinary range of stories and filmmaking voices, and our juries bring distinct perspectives to the films. My thanks to each of them for their generous participation in the festival this year.”
