Newspapers and film-makers have a tendency to pick each others’ pockets for ideas. We are, essentially, fascinated by the same thing: other people’s stories. And it is, of course, the magic of film that a mass-produced medium can feel so personal. But there is something uncanny this year about the marriage of The Times and the London Film Festival.

We at the newspaper love film, in all its parts: the art of it, the glamour of it, the entertainment of it, the business of it, the science of it and the humanity of it. This year, the feeling is mutual.

By some happy accident, this year’s selection of the world’s best films will also excite people with an interest in the news. For some of the big premieres at The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival are themselves newsworthy: Oliver Stone comes to London weeks before the US presidential election to unveil W., his judgment of George Bush’s presidency; Steven Soderbergh brings Che, the fabled revolutionary who remains better known as an image, rather than a man; and Ron Howard opens the festival with the film of Frost/Nixon, one of the most extraordinary encounters of modern history, the story of a president’s undoing and the making of a journalist.

There are, though, so very many more films to be seen here. London is at the heart of the world’s film business: our professionals are responsible for so much of the very best in world cinema. The festival reflects that range, passion and standards. The Times is enormously proud to sponsor it and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we do.

The surreal strangeness of war

Ari Folman tells Wendy Ide about his animated view of war in Waltz with Bashir, and how there is 'no glamour in war'

• 5 to watch: unmissable documentaries - Blind Loves, Modern Life

BACKGROUND

• How Josh Brolin learnt to love W

• Gonzo: celebrating Thompson’s legacy

• Double vision: meet Sir Richard Eyre

• New directions for the London Film Festival

• Boyle explains why Mumbai is a key location

BACKGROUND

• Is Charlie Kaufman out of his head?

• Class wars: the pact between teacher and students

• Dakota Blue Richards: girl in 10,000

• Jessica Biel: formidable screen force

• America’s muse captures Winterbottom

BACKGROUND

• Frost/Nixon: an historic meeting of minds

• Boyle returns to squalor and form

• London Film Festival line-up unveiled

• Of Time and the City

• Oliver Stone's W

Related Internet Links

• London Film Festival 2008

James Harding is Editor of The Times

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