Martin Scorsese's The Irishman to close 2019 London Film Festival

Martin Scorsese's crime drama The Irishman will close the 2019 London Film Festival.

 It was recently announced that the Goodfellas director's highly-anticipated film, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, will premiere on 27 September, when it opens the New York Film Festival, and it has now been revealed it will have its international premiere as part of LFF's Closing Night Gala on 13 October.  

 "I'm extremely honoured to be having the International Premiere of The Irishman at the closing night of the BFI London Film Festival. This picture was many years in the making," Scorsese said in a statement. "It's a project that Robert De Niro and I started talking about a long time ago, and we wanted to make it the way it needed to be made. It's also a picture that all of us could only have made at this point in our lives. We're all very excited to be bringing The Irishman to London." 

 The Irishman, which marks the ninth feature collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history - the disappearance of legendary Union President Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.   

 The Taxi Driver actor stars as the real-life hustler and hitman Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran, who, shortly before he died, claimed to have killed Hoffa.  

  Steven Zaillian adapted his screenplay from Charles Brandt's non-fiction novel I Heard You Paint Houses, which documents what Sheeran told the author about Hoffa, who was legally declared dead in 1982. 

 Festival bosses have also announced that there will be simultaneous preview screenings of the film taking place at cinemas across the U.K., ahead of its Netflix release later this year.  

 The BFI London Film Festival opens with Armando Iannucci's The Personal History of David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel and Tilda Swinton, on 2 October.