AS the G&T  glasses clink and the British Film Festival comes around again, it’s hard to get away from the trusty old accolade, “Best of British”, for that is exactly what curator Kim Petalas is aiming for.

I caught up with Petalas as he put the finishing touches to this year’s event, which opens here at Place Electric on  October 19.

Petalas  stepped down from his role as Palace Cinemas national programming director at Christmas after some 30 years with the company, but has stayed on as consultant to the festival.

When I chat to  him, he makes it clear that “the focal point of the festival is to select the very best British films that I possibly could”, adding that he was helped by the fact that the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals had so many British films.

“I was also keen about securing the James Bond 60th retrospective,” he says. “I thought it would be great to focus on Bond for the 20th anniversary of a festival and so was able to secure every James Bond fil – a special thing,” as Bond fans, he knows, will be delighted with the  showcase of six decades.

Of course, he’s not just focusing on Bond and the opening night will feature “Mrs Harris Goes to Paris”, based on the novel by Paul Gallico, where Lesley Melville as Mrs ‘Arris, sets off on a journey through Parisian high fashion – “the ideal thing for opening night”.

That may be a whimsical comedy, but drama is to the fore in this festival, Petalas says.

Then there is, for instance, Stephen Frears’ feature “The Lost King”, based on the true story of how the remains of Richard III were discovered beneath a Leicester car park, with Sally Hawkins as the woman who forced scholars to rethink everything they knew about the king.

Another very strong film is “Emily”, the directorial debut of British-Australian Frances O’Connor, a tale of desire and creativity in 19th century England, with Emily Brontë as the focal point.

Similarly impressive is “Aisha”, where a young Nigerian woman seeks asylum in Ireland, but flounders in a maze of bureaucracy.

Fans of “The Crown” will enjoy seeing Olivia Colman without the tiaras in “Joyride”, a road movie about a reluctant mother who is about to give away her newborn baby when she is unexpectedly joined by a cheeky 12-year-old boy on a trip of self-discovery.

In “Living”, Bill Nighy, a favourite of British Film Festival fans according to Petalas, stars as a terminally ill man searching for meaning in a realist film set in ’50s London.

Fear not, there are comedies.

In the surreal comedy “Brian and Charles”, a lonely inventor decides to build a robot for a company, but gets more than he bargained for and in “Fisherman’s Friends 2: One And All”, the sequel to the 2019 hit about the Cornish sea shanty singing group The Buoys, there’s a laugh a minute.

No respectable film festival these days is without a strong documentary component and this year there  are a couple of beauties, one about fashion design Mary Quant, in which there are interviews with supermodel Kate Moss, the model and super-designer Vivian Westwood and another a cultural examination of things that are British, such as castles, umbrellas and ships. “Quintessentially British” features  interviewees such as Ian McKellen and Judy Dench.

And for closing night? That’s the romantic comedy “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” directed by Shekhar Kapur, featuring Lily James as a filmmaker who documents a friend’s  arranged marriage, with Emma Thompson playing her mum.

British Film Festival, Palace Electric Cinemas, October 19-November 16.

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