The UK premiere of Heysel 85 is to take place at the BFI London Film Festival next month.
The “intense and immersive” reimagining of one of football’s darkest nights stars Violet Braeckman (War), as the daughter of the Mayor of Brussels, alongside Matteo Simoni (Callboys), who plays a journalist drawn into the heart of the unfolding tragedy.
It is set in Brussels’ Heysel Stadium at the 1985 European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus.
As thousands of fans head to the ground, rivalries fuel the heated atmosphere and violence erupts. As the death toll rises, the mayor’s daughter and an Italian journalist are “drawn into the heart of the catastrophe.”
READ MORE – Hillsborough: A view from 1989, by former BBC Radio Merseyside head Mick Ord
Filmmakers say that the story unfolds “not merely as a historical reconstruction, but as a lived, moment-by-moment experience.”
It’s been selected for the BFI London Film Festival’s Thrill strand and has previously been screened as a Special Gala at the Berlin International Film Festival. After which Variety called it “a tense political metaphor” and “an anxiety-inducing work of cinéma vérité”.
It is directed by Teodora Ana Mihai and distributed by Icon Film.
The UK theatrical release is set for 20 November.
On 29th May 1985, 39 people died and 600 were injured at the Heysel Stadium. Fans were initially crushed against a wall, which then collapsed. It led to English clubs being banned from Europe for 5 years.
