SAVING MR. BANKS is directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) and stars two-time Academy Award®-winner Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers, the London-based author of Mary Poppins, with fellow double Oscar®-winner Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. They lead a stellar international supporting cast that includes Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti and Ruth Wilson. The film boasts a number of other British filmmaking talents including producer Alison Owen, p.g.a. (Jane Eyre, Elizabeth) and co-writer Kelly Marcel with production companies Ruby Films and BBC Films.

John Lee Hancock, Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks are all expected to attend the Closing Night Gala.

Clare Stewart, BFI Head of Exhibition and Festival Director said, “There is only one word that gives full expression to the inventiveness and creativity of the film that will be our Closing Night Gala for the 57th BFI London Film Festival – SAVING MR. BANKS is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Positively overflowing with its ebullient love of storytelling and the filmmaking process, SAVING MR. BANKS is also a magical ode to the brilliance and volatility of the two very different creative forces behind the making of Mary Poppins, with Emma Thompson superb as the protective author P.L. Travers and Tom Hanks in charming form as Walt Disney.”

Producer Alison Owen said, “SAVING MR. BANKS is very much about British manners versus American values, as Pamela Travers and Walt Disney battle over the rights to Mary Poppins, so it feels absolutely fitting that the LFF Closing Night should be our European Premiere, and we feel very honoured. We hope Pamela Travers would approve wholeheartedly. We filmed the London sequences in the street where Pamela lived, and London was both the start of the journey for Mary Poppins and for our movie, so we feel like we’re beginning in the right place.”

The 57th BFI London Film Festival runs from Wednesday 9 October-Sunday 20 October. The full programme for the Festival will be announced on Wednesday 4 September.