SUFFRAGETTE, starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep, will receive its European premiere on Wednesday October 7, 2015, as the Opening Night film of the 59th BFI London Film Festival.  SUFFRAGETTE is the first feature film to tell the story of the ordinary British women at the turn of the last century who risked everything in the fight for equality and the right to vote.

The film stars Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Whishaw and Meryl Streep. It is directed by Sarah Gavron, who returns to the Festival for a third time, re-teaming with her Brick Lane screenwriter Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady).

SUFFRAGETTE is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fought for the right to vote, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with an increasingly brutal State. These women were not primarily from the genteel educated classes, they were working women who had seen peaceful protest achieve nothing. Radicalized and turning to violence as the only route to change, they were willing to lose everything in their fight for equality – their jobs, their homes, their children and their lives. The character of Maud, played by Carey Mulligan, is one such foot soldier. The story of her fight for dignity is both heart-breaking and inspirational.

The 59th BFI London Film Festival runs from Wednesday October 7, to Sunday October 18, 2015.