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

Robert DeNiro attended this years Festival to support his latest film, Martin Scorsese’s Netflix epic THE IRISHMAN and deliver a Screen Talk at the BFI on London’s Southbank. The 76 year-old plays Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran, a World War II vet and Teamster unionist who recounts his alleged jobs as a hitman for the Bufalino crime family in Pennsylvania and his role in the disappearance of Labour Union leader and his longtime friend Jimmy Hoffa. It is the ninth collaboration with Martin, starting with MEAN STREETS in 1973.

Bobby, as Martin calls him, has received seven Academy Award nominations, winning two. His first, was for his Best Supporting Actor performance as the young Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER PART II (1974), followed six years later for Best Actor as World Champion boxer Jake LaMotta in RAGING BULL. He also won the Golden Globe for that role and has collected six BAFTA, four Emmys and four SAG nominations.

Getting Robert’s much sort after autograph was challenging given the numbers who wanted it, but he managed to see my drawing, which includes a portrait of him as the young Vito amongst the sea of items smothering him after THE IRISHMAN Gala screening at the Embankment Garden cinema and signed it for me.

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.