In its ninth year, the festival will screen more than 200 films at 30 venues.

London’s East End Film Festival will open on April 22 with a screening of Barney Platts-Mills’s 1969 cult film Bronco Bullfrog, which was shot on a shoestring in East London and went on to win the Critics Week Award at Cannes.

Now in its ninth year, the festival will screen over 200 films from both local and international film-makers at 30 venues across East London. It runs until April 30.

Highlights will include a selection of politically themed films in honour of the upcoming UK general election, including Robert Heath’s cinema version of the play Sus, about the 1979 general election. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Heath, and the film’s actors Clint Dyer, Rafe Spall and Ralph Brown.

The festival will premiere the re-edit of Alan Miles documentary Who Shot The Sheriff, tracking the rise of the National Front in Britain during the 1970s, together with a discussion on the subject of racism with panelists including British film-makers Gurinder Chadha and Don Letts, and actor Riz Ahmed.

Russian actress Oksana Akinshina, who starred in Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4 Ever, and director Igor Volshin will also be in attendance to present psychedelic drama I Am, which screened in the Forum section at this year’s Berlinale.

Other films in the programme include Mark Donne’s The Rime of the Modern Mariner, narrated by musician Carl Barat; civil liberties documentary Erasing David; and Devon-set love story Ana Begins.

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