If 'Always Look On The Bright Side' brought a tear of nostalgia to your eye during the Olympic closing ceremony, the animated Graham Chapman 3D kinda-biopic A Liar's Autobiography could seriously open the floodgates. It's not out in the UK until January next year, but BFI London Film Festival-goers will be able to feast their eyes on the comic silliness and serious bits on October 16 at Empire's - that's us! - gala screening.

"There's a lot of unprecedented things about this film," explained co-director Jeff Simpson when we spoke to him at the LFF launch. "I don't think there's ever been a film written by and starring a man who's been dead for 23 years."

A Liar's Autobiography takes the former Python's autobiography, using the audio version he recorded in Harry Nilsson's studio before his death, and overlays it on animation styles from claymation to traditional hand drawn techniques and the rarer oil-on-glass approach. "We were lucky because when Graham recorded his lines he put a performance in," said Simpson.

As fellow director Bill 'son of Terry' Jones explained, the film is a Python-sanctioned ensemble piece that's unlike anything we've seen before: "It's an autobiography written by six different authors which three different directors have turned into a film, using 14 different animation studios."

So why 3D? "We just liked the idea of saying 'Lovingly jumping on last year's bandwagon' on the poster," laughed Ben Timlett, the third member of the directorial troika. "When we asked all the animation studios if they'd worked with 3D, they all said no", added Jones, "so we thought: 'Brilliant idea, this can't fail!'"



A Liar's Autobiography is in cinemas on January 25, 2013. It'll be showing at the LFF on October 16, with tickets onsale from September 24.