The sixth day of this years London Film Festival began with disappointment, as the realisation dawned upon me that I had missed out on Miral, the latest work from one of my favourite filmmakers, Julian Schnabel. Words cannot express just how annoyed I am with myself. The heat on the film is mixed, although praise has been unanimously heaped upon the performance of Freida Pinto, the female lead from Slumdog Millionaire.

I also missed out on the In the Hands of Fate: Existentialism in Film conference hosted by Sight & Sound magazine, which saw filmmakers Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Michelangelo Frammartino, the directors behind Uncle Boonmee Who Could Recall His Past Lives and Le Quattro Volte. It sounds like an amazing event, with an open discussion on some key areas in film representation.

Monday’s big film was Mike Leigh’s Another Year, which premiered simultaneously at sites across the country. Personally I cannot stand the patronising work of Leigh, and this film fared no better than his back catologue in my eyes. No doubt this will be a huge success with the fair-weather “classy” cinemagoer, but I hated it. The appearance of George Osborne and Boris Johnson at the screening did nothing to reassure me of the legitimacy of Leigh’s credibility.

Following in the negative tradition of Mike Leigh, Bertrand Tavernier is another filmmaker who I’ve not really ever taken to, although admittedly I’m not as vehement towards this particular filmmaker as the former. His The Princess of Montpensier did nothing for me.

One of the key areas of the BFI’s work is in the restoration and salvaging of important works. While they weren’t directly involved in the restoration of Gunnar Hedes Saga, a 1923 Mauritz Stiller film, by screening the film on such a large canvas the invaluable work being instigated by the likes of the BFI and its Swedish counterpart are highlighted greatly. I’m not sure whether or not there will be much of an opportunity to see this theatrically outside of London, but its definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

The surprise highlight of the day had to be Jean-François Caissy’s Canadian documentary Journey’s End, a beautifully told flipped coming of age story. Journey’s End tells the story of a former motel-turned-retirement home, and the people who occupy the building. Caissy removes traditional forms of story-telling technique, and simply presents the events as they happen. Minimal editing combined with a lack of voice-over narration and other traditional documentary devices create an experience that is as real and as raw as it gets. It reminded me heavily of Eugenio Polgovsky’s The Inheritors, a film I saw at the 2009 Bradford International Film Festival, and I only hope that Journey’s End fares better than that work on a commercial level.