There is a tendency to forget how film fashions our understanding. Two decades ago, Blade Runner captured a sense of what it was for the automaton to have feelings, whether it was the automaton within us all, or the automaton that we may ultimately create. The source for that work may have been a thin, idiosyncratic novel, but the moving images articulated the contradiction of progress in a way the written word was incapable of achieving.

You do not have to speak Japanese to appreciate the subtlety of Tokyo Story, a film whose emotional depth was not characteristic of one culture but indicative of all. Which film will move you this year at The Times BFI London Film Festival in the way that these two works affected me as a young filmgoer? There is no one correct response to any film, and that is a charm of cinema: that beauty and meaning are in the eye of the beholder, not determined by a select few or precluded by the taste of the many.

So study the film form guide, be open to the possibility that the story that may touch you could be from Hollywood or Bollywood or beyond. The works in this year’s festival are wide in subject and broad in treatment, and are defined by their quality and originality. Which film will touch you? Where will you find the scene or the character that stays with you long after the credits have rolled and the cinema has emptied?

Meryl Streep on politics and passion

From The French Lieutenant’s Woman to a news reporter: how does Meryl Streep get her disguises so right

• Meryl Streep got the ball rolling

Related Internet Links

• London Film Festival

Background

• London just capital for directors

• Naomi Watts wows on opening night

• Tony Leung is in the mood for lust

• Pretty boy Brad Pitt grows up

• Brothers grim

Background

• Eastern Promises

• Viggo Mortensen joins the underworld's cast

• Michael Moore's healthy scepticism

• Are you kidding?

• Laura Linney, accidental screen queen

Related Internet Links

• LFF listings

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• DVD

• Oscars

• Bollywood

Editor's choice

• Gordon Brown’s secret to stayin’ alive
• What’s up with Woody?
• Can Cannes get serious?