The world premiere of Hollywood’s grandest critique yet of the War on Terror promises to be one of the highlights of the The Times BFI London Film Festival next month.

Lions for Lambs stars Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who also directs the multilayered thriller about an idealistic professor, an investigative journalist and a hawkish presidential hopeful set against the backdrop of the Afghanistan conflict.

All three stars will be walking the red carpet in Leicester Square before the Times Gala screening of the film on October 22. Lions for Lambs has already been attacked as antiwar propaganda in the United States after the screening of a hard-hitting trailer. It shows Cruise, who plays a senator, haranguing Streep, as the journalist, with the words: “Do you want to win the War on Terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes-or-no question of our time.”

The film is one of about twenty on the War on Terror already shot, in production or about to start filming — a marked contrast to the industry’s slower response to the Second World War and the Vietnam War. It is also the first production from the new incarnation of United Artists, the troubled studio that Cruise helped to resurrect last year.

Sandra Hebron, the festival’s artistic director, described the premiere as a “major coup” that demonstrated the festival’s appeal to film-makers looking for the kind of springboard to award nominations that The Last King of Scotland benefited from last year.

Besides Cruise, Redford and Streep, there will be appearances from the directors Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, United 93), Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids) and Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) who will talk about their careers.

And in a unique collaboration, David Lynch, the director of Blue Velvet and the TV series Twin Peaks, will appear on stage with the folk singer Donovan to discuss “meditation, consciousness and creativity”.

Halle Berry, Ang Lee, David Cronenberg, Naomi Watts, Sienna Miller, Julian Schnabel, Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Todd Haynes are also expected to attend.

This year’s festival, the 51st, boasts seven world, 29 European and 128 British premieres among the 184 features and 133 shorts being shown from 43 countries.

The top prize winners from both Cannes and Venice are represented through 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu’s Romanian abortion thriller and Lee’s Lust, Caution, an erotic drama set in 1940s Shanghai.

The festival opens with Eastern Promises, Cronenberg’s gritty tale of a British nurse who becomes entangled with Russian mobsters, and closes 16 days later with a riotous backpacking trip through India in Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited.

Other highlights include I’m Not There, Haynes’s quirky journey into the life and times of Bob Dylan in which Cate Blanchett is one of six actors to portray the singer; Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s follow-up to Hidden, which is an American remake of his own shocking siege drama, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, starring Brad Pitt.

Ms Hebron said that her team had watched more than 2,000 films before making their selection. This left her with the impression that cinema this year was pressingly concerned with the social, political and environmental state of the world.

Robert Thomson, the Editor of The Times, said: “The list of works gathered for The Times BFI London Film Festival is a tribute to the organisers and an indication that the country’s lovers of film will be very busy in late October and early November. There will be the famous and the infamous, the stars and the hangers-on, but there will also be many a film whose intrinsic worth will broaden the mind and bring a smile to the face.”

Tickets for The Times BFI London Film Festival can be booked online at www.lff.org.uk or by phone on 020-7928 3232 from September 29.

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