“We have to clear the stuff that hasn’t been submitted to the BBFC,” says Wootton of films screening in the Festival’s West End locations. “But with films like Bully, [UK distributor] FilmFour submitted it pretty much as soon as they got it, so it’s not like there was any difficulty there. And if we have any material we think may cause problems, then frankly we just show it at the NFT, because we have a special license down there. But there’s nothing in this year’s Festival that’s likely to cause offence. Well, I don’t think there is, anyway!”

The RLFF - which follows the by now well-established festival of festivals/panorama of world cinema formula - boasts almost 200 feature films, including eight world premieres, but it has only one real prize: the ‘Classic Shorts’ short film competition, sponsored by Turner Classic Movies and Empire magazine. This year’s judges include Ewan McGregor, Ridley Scott and John Madden.

Leicester Square movies: from top, Maggie Smith in Gosford Park; Steve Martin and Helena Bonham Carter in Novocaine; and Mike Wazowski and James P Sullivan in Monsters, Inc

In addition to the Festival on the Square and the Galas, there are five other major sub-divisions of the programme: New British Cinema; French Revolutions; Cinema Europa; World Cinema; and Experimenta.

“I think that the French section this year is very strong,” says Wootton, “again with a combination of some younger film-makers and some of the most established French directors. There’s the new Claude Miller film, Betty Fisher et autres histoires; the new André Téchiné, Le café de la plage (Beach Café); and Raoul Ruiz – well, Raoul Ruiz isn’t French but he pretty much works exclusively in French. And of course there’s the Eric Rohmer film, L’Anglaise et le Duc (The Lady and the Duke), which seems to be causing an awful lot of controversy in France.