London Film School

London Film School (LFS) is a film school in London, United Kingdom, and is situated in Covent Garden, London, neighbouring Soho, a hub of the UK film industry. It is the oldest film school in the UK.

LFS was founded in 1956 by Gilmore Roberts as the London School of Film Technique (LSFT). Originally based on Electric Avenue in Brixton, the school moved to a converted brewery on Shelton Street in 1966, after a brief parenthesis in Charlotte Street, and changed its name to London Film School in 1969. From 1974 to 2000, it was known as the London International Film School (LIFS), and reverted to the name London Film School in 2001. In 2025, it expanded with a new campus in nearby Parker Street, now become its main hub.

LFS offers various degrees at postgraduate level: an MA in Filmmaking, an MA in Screenwriting, and, in partnership with the University of Exeter, MA in International Film Business and a PhD in Film by Practice. It also offers a range of short and part-time professional development courses under the LFS Workshops banner.

LFS recruits students from all over the world and is specifically constituted as an international community; around 80 per cent of its students are from outside the United Kingdom. LFS is recognised as a World-Leading Specialist Provider by the Office for Students and in recent years it has been named one of the top international film schools by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

The school's current director is Chris Auty and chairman is Greg Dyke.

The origin of the LFS was a short film training course taught by Gilmore Roberts at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea. After a dispute with the art school, Roberts decided to continue the course independently, so he set up the London School of Film Technique in October 1956. After struggling to find suitable premises, the first filmmaking course finally started in April 1957, based in a rather modest locale above a grocer's shop in Electric Avenue, Brixton.

The school was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the emergence of film schools in Eastern Europe after World War II, it was set up around the belief that the future of the British film industry required properly designed formal training, rather than the apprenticeship basis which was, at the time, the only access into the field. At first, the school offered a six-month diploma course, which students could take over the day or evening classes, with an optional six-month extension. Under the leadership of a new principal, Robert Dunbar, the course was expanded to 33 weeks and later two years, forming the basic structure for a curriculum that is still largely in place today.

This caused a drastic increase in the student numbers, which made the original premises unsuited. The school moved to the West End in 1963, first into a building in Charlotte Street and later, in 1966, in its current premises on Shelton Street. In 1969 it changed name to London Film School, to avoid being regarded as an institution that only offered narrow technical training. Notable alumni from the 1960s include directors such as Mike Leigh, Michael Mann, Don Boyd, and Les Blair, cinematographers such as Tak Fujimoto and Roger Pratt, as well as producers like Iain Smith.