What are film festivals for? They offer the first ringside seats for tomorrow’s cinema. They reflect the health or otherwise of the world’s most popular art form. They are strips of red carpet to parade nervous new stars and next year’s Oscar contenders. They are experimental zoos and debating rooms where cultures and ideas sometimes clash violently. Mostly they exist because cinema is one of the few global languages that anyone understands.

The Times BFI London Film Festival is all these things and more. It has a record 189 features and 108 shorts from 43 countries. There are 16 World, 20 European and a staggering 119 UK premieres.

The open and closing galas are a statement of intent. The world premiere of Frost/Nixon, based on Peter Morgan’s hit stage play, and Danny Boyle’s closing night film, Slumdog Millionaire, book-end the strongest showing of British talent yet assembled.

The rest of the festival strands take their cues from the glitzy and topical galas and the big showpieces in Film on the Square. The documentary section is bristling with political mavericks such as Alex Gibney’s Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S. Thompson, and World Cinema boasts an extraordinary spread of new American indies. As ever Cinema Europa and French Revolutions are littered with exotic baubles, such as the high-octane Danish thriller The Candidate and Raymond Depardon’s unsettling portrait of rural France in Modern Life.

For those who like a walk on the wild side, there is no better segment on the art-house circuit to explore than Experimenta. And for those who wonder whatever happened to old-fashioned cinema glories, London provides matchless Treasures from the Archives, including a Sergio Leone classic, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Go forth and enjoy.

1. Frost/Nixon

The world premiere of Peter Morgan’s hit play about the famous television interviews that David Frost conducted in 1977 with the disgraced ex-President, Richard Nixon, has all the ingredients of a classic. The stakes were immense. Frost was paying Nixon more than a million dollars for the privilege of grilling him. Would the Grand Inquisitor coax a public confession from the Master of Deception? Or would Nixon persuade that he was a man more sinned against than sinning? Michael Sheen (Frost) and Frank Langella (Nixon) star. Oct 15, OLS, 7pm; Oct 18, OWE2, 12.30pm

2. W.

The Times Gala film is one of the most eagerly awaited and controversial premieres on the card. Oliver Stone is not a director who pulls his punches. His biopic about George W. Bush, starring Josh Brolin as the spoilt and shiftless son of James Cromwell’s Texas baron and Republican President, is not comfortable family viewing, but it’s great satire, and almost indecently topical. Oct 23, OLS, 7.30pm; Oct 24, OWE2, 1pm

3. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S. Thompson

As if there isn’t enough Republican-bashing on the menu, Alex Gibney’s Documentary Gala film about Hunter S. Thompson celebrates the madcap life and journalistic career of the most famous Republican-thumper of them all. Gibney excavates new archive footage about Thompson’s year on the road with the Hell’s Angels and more, while Johnny Depp narrates. Oct 27, OWE2, 6pm; Oct 28, OWE1, 1.30pm

4. Slumdog Millionaire

The closing night gala is an exotic upbeat movie by Danny Boyle about a boy from the slums of Mumbai who wins a seat on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The film is an acute indictment of the power of television. Like all Boyle’s best work, Slumdogis an intense fusion of movement, colour and pumping music. Oct 30, OLS, 7pm

5. Genova

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film was shot at his usual breakneck speed. It crosses borders, physical and metaphorical, and is generously stained with melancholia. Colin Firth’s decision to move his two young daughters to Genova, Italy, after their mother dies in a car accident, has a profound effect on all three survivors. The confusion and mystery is supported by a terrific cast. Oct 22, OWE2, 8.30pm; Oct 26, OWE1, 4pm

6. Of Time and the City

This nostalgic film ode to the city of Liverpool from the Second World War to the present day is a subversive and subtle joy. Terence Davies guides us like a sardonic Faust through this archive-footage montage of the city he grew up in. The vintage newsreel is brilliantly subverted by his fruity voiceover. The master is back. Oct 18, OWE1, 9pm; Oct 21, NFT3, 4.15pm

7. Hunger

The former Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen has crafted a stunning and totally chilling drama about the stand-off between the IRA political prisoners in Long Kesh and Her Majesty’s Prison Service. Michael Fassbender nearly starved himself to play Bobby Sands. The 24-minute reason why, shot in one take, is one of the most muscular pieces of cinema I’ve seen. Oct 19, OWE2, 9pm; Oct 20, OWE1, 4pm

8. Franklyn

Gerald McMorrow’s thriller is split between contemporary London as we know and love it, and a futuristic metropolis called Meanwhile City, ruled by religious zealots. Produced by Jeremy Thomas, the film taps the huge influence comic books and graphic novels are bringing to bear on cinema. Oct 16, OWE2, 6pm; Oct 19, Rio, 1.30pm

9. Anywhere USA

No festival is complete without a trip to the far side. This short trilogy starts with a bonkers axe- man-in-a-wood parable about prejudice, fear and terrorism. The middle story twitches around a young girl’s belief in the Tooth Fairy. And the final reel tucks into a venerable rich American who has never met a black person. My pick of the Experimenta strand. Oct 24, NFT1, 11.15pm

10. Touki Bouki

To choose just one reminted gem from the archives is simply unfair. But this 1973 film from Senegal, directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, is a peach. A couple of disaffected Dakar students try to book a crooked passage to Paris. It’s motorbike nostalgia, and one of two major restorations by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. No other film festival touches London in this division. Enjoy. Oct 24, NFT1, 6.30pm

James Christopher is chief film critic of The Times

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