Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, had its UK premiere as a Gala at the Royal Festival Hall during the seventieth London Film Festival.
Luca Guadagnino, the director of Challengers, gave Artificial its UK premiere as a late-evening Gala at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Sunday 11 October 2026. Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman.
Guadagnino was born in Palermo in 1971 and spent his early childhood in Addis Ababa. The family returned to Sicily in 1977, and a Super 8 camera from his mother started him filming.
His first feature, The Protagonists, opened at Venice in 1999. The Desire trilogy of I Am Love, A Bigger Splash and Call Me by Your Name brought him wider recognition. Bones and All won him the Silver Lion for direction in 2022.
Simon Rich wrote Artificial, which follows Altman through the days in 2023 when OpenAI removed and then reinstated him as chief executive. Yura Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever and Monica Barbaro plays Mira Murati, with Mark Rylance.
The film had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on 5 October. The London Gala, in the festival’s 70th year, was its first screening in Britain.
Garfield trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and was nominated for Academy Awards for Hacksaw Ridge and Tick, Tick… Boom!