This year’s BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL has recently concluded. Here is one of the guests whom I met at the event:

Martin Scorsese is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in cinematic history. He returns to the genre he has helped define with a mystery that has never been solved in his latest epic crime film THE IRISHMAN, which closed this year’s Festival with Gala screenings at both the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square and the pop-up Embankment Garden Cinema, after receiving its world premiere at the New York Film Festival in September.

It’s Marty’s ( as everyone who’s met him once calls him) ninth collaboration with Robert DeNiro, who plays Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran, a Labour Union Official and Mafia hitman connected with the killing of the infamous Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa, With a budget of $160 million and a running time of three and a half hours, THE IRISHMAN (titled onscreen as I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES, based on Charles Brandt’s 2004 memoir of the same name) has become his best reviewed and most acclaimed film, heading GOODFELLAS and TAXI DRIVER with 100% rating from Top Critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Only 23 films have achieved the perfect score, including CITIZEN KANE, REAR WINDOW and ALL ABOUT EVE. Many critics have called it his ‘magnus opus’ and given his astonishing career, with eight Oscar Best Director nominations, winning in 2006 for THE DEPARTED, nine BAFTA noms, winning in 1990 for GOODFELLAS, three Golden Globes wins, an Emmy victory and the Cannes Palme d’Or for TAXI DRIVER in 1976, among others, that is saying something.

Martin also delivered BAFTA’s prestigious David Lean Lecture while he was in London. He signed and dedicated my drawing after THE IRISHMAN screening at Embankment Garden.