Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri to close 61st BFI London Film Festival

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

The 61st BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express® is delighted to announce that this year’s Closing Night gala will be Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards outside Ebbing, MissourI. The film will receive its UK premiere on Sunday 15 October at the Odeon Leicester Square and acclaimed screenwriter, director and playwright McDonagh is expected to attend along with Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell and other filmmakers and cast.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town’s revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing’s law enforcement is only exacerbated.

Written and directed by Academy Award winning director Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Zeljko Ivanek, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, Samara Weaving with John Hawkes and Peter Dinklage.

Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film 4 present a Blueprint Pictures production produced by Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Martin McDonagh, the team behind In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, with executive producers Bergen Swanson, Diarmuid McKeown, Rose Garnett, David Kosse and Daniel Battsek and co-producer Ben Knight. The filmmaking team includes director of photography Ben Davis, BSC, production designer Inbal Weinberg, film editor Jon Gregory, ACE, costume designer Melissa Toth, music by Carter Burwell and casting by Sarah Halley Finn, CSA. 

BFI London Film Festival Director, Clare Stewart says:

“We are thrilled to be closing the 61st BFI London Film Festival with Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. By turns riotously funny and deeply sobering, this all-too-relevant film confronts division and conflict in small-town America and is driven by a blistering performance from Frances McDormand.”

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri Director Martin McDonagh says:

“I’m excited to bring this film back to my home town for its UK premiere. I’m more than proud of it and if there are any fans of In Bruges still out there, I don’t think they’ll be disappointed.”

Twentieth Century Fox will release the film across the UK and Ireland on 12 January, 2018. 

The 61st BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express® takes place from Wednesday 4 October-Sunday 15 October 2017. The full Festival programme will be announced on Thursday 31 August 2017.