Aardman’s Chicken Run sequel previews in Bristol as part of the London Film Festival touring programme

On release back in 2000, Aardman Animations’ debut feature, Chicken Run, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, swiftly became a huge global hit. To this day, it ranks as the highest grossing stop-motion animated film of all time, ahead of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Patient fans have had to wait 23 years for a sequel, but it’s finally here. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget receives its premiere at the 67th London BFI Film festival on October 14, before being released on Netflix from December 15. The really good news is that it’s also being shown three times at the Watershed in Bristol over the weekend of October 14/15 as part of this year’s London Film Festival touring programme.

The sequel is directed by Sam Fell, who helmed Aardman’s first foray into computer animation: Flushed Away (2006). His other credits as director include The Tale of Despereaux and ParaNorman. The story has our fowl friends living on an idyllic island sanctuary, having escaped the gruesome Tweedy farm at the end of the first film. But a new danger soon presents itself as horrible Mrs Tweedy is out for revenge.

Miranda Richardson returns as the voice of Mrs Tweedy, but much of the rest of the cast has changed. Zachary Levi takes over from the disgraced Mel Gibson as the voice of Rocky the rooster, while Thandiwe Newton replaces Julia Sawalha as Rocky’s wife Ginger. This recasting led to accusations of ageism after Sawalha said she’d been dumped for “sounding too old”. “I have officially been plucked, stuffed and roasted,” she tweeted.

The 2023 BFI London Film Festival programme at the Watershed runs from October 4-15, with plenty of other tasty previews. Here’s what’s on offer:

Saltburn (Wed 4 & Wed 11 Oct)

Struggling to fit in at Oxford University, Oliver (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten in this wicked tale of privilege, status and desire.

Earth Mama (Thur 5 Oct)

A young, expectant mother battles drug addiction and the oppressive foster-care system to regain custody of her children in this brave and intimate debut.

May December (Fri 6 Oct)

The latest from Todd Haynes: a pitch-perfect melodrama, focusing on an actor researching for a film about a relationship with a significant age gap. Cast includes Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.

Housekeeping for Beginners (Sat 7 Oct)

A queer Macedonian woman goes to drastic measures to hold her makeshift family together following a tragedy, in idiosyncratic director Goran Stolevski’s new film.

The Royal Hotel (Sat 7 Oct)

Backpackers Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick find themselves in uncharted territory in this taut Outback thriller from the director of The Assistant.

https://youtu.be/apvCBN3LOP0

Robot Dreams (Sun 8 Oct)

This rich and emotionally engaging animation about friendship, set in a bustling 1980s New York City, follows a lonely Dog who decides to buy himself a new companion in the shape of Robot, delivered in parts for home assembly but soon lovingly transformed into a fully functioning friend.

All of Us Strangers (Mon 9 Oct)

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal star in Andrew Haigh’s unsettling adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s Strangers. This searching portrait of relationships is everything we have come to expect from the exceptional writer-director of Weekend and 45 Years.

The Mission (Tue 10 Oct)

Martyr or a deluded foreign invader? Animation and archive combine in this compelling portrait of the life and death of young missionary John Allen Chau who makes an illegal and fatal voyage to an island in the Indian Ocean in order to convert one of the last remaining isolated communities on Earth.

Eileen (Tue 10 Oct)

A shy prison guard falls for the facility’s glamorous new psychiatrist, played here by a thrilling Anne Hathaway, in this intoxicating adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s psychosexual thriller.

How to Have Sex (Wed 11 Oct)

A startlingly frank and stylish UK debut about a wild teen holiday gone awry, tackling thorny issues of coercion and consent head on.

20,000 Species Of Bees (Thur 12 Oct)

This beautifully understated paean to the inquisitiveness of youth set in the French Basque country is a poetic, gender-identity coming-of-age film, featuring a dazzling award-winning performance by Sofía Otero as 8-year-old Cocó.

Omen (Thur 12 Oct)

Koffi’s epileptic seizure, prior to his trip back home to Kinshasa, acts as an omen for the turbulence that awaits him, in rapper-turned-filmmaker Baloji’s Cannes winner.

The End We Start From (Fri 13 Oct)

As catastrophic floods submerge Britain, a young woman and her newborn baby struggle to find safe haven in a crumbling, dangerous society. Mahalia Belo’s confident feature debut brings Megan Hunter’s acclaimed 2017 dystopian novel to the screen, with an excellent leading performance from Jodie Comer.

Birth/Rebirth (Fri 13 Oct)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gets a new lease of life in this chilling morality tale from debut director Laura Moss. This female-centric revision of a horror classic offers an emotional resonant and morally complex meditation on creation and motherhood.

The Holdovers (Sat 14 Oct)

Sideways director Alexander Payne travels back to the 1970s for his eighth film, in which three disparate characters find support in the most unlikely of places as a ragtag bunch with nowhere to go, while the rest of the students of their New England prep school depart for the winter holidays.

Go here for more information and to buy tickets for all screenings.

Main image from Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: Aardman/Netflix