Movies from 77 countries will screen at the 2021 London Film Festival, as Britain’s leading cinema showcase welcomes mass audiences back to movie theaters after a pandemic-disrupted year.

The festival program, announced Tuesday, includes 158 features, down from 225 during its last pre-pandemic edition in 2019. The 2020 festival was a curtailed collection of 58 films, most screened online.

This year, mask-wearing, full-capacity audiences will be able to attend gala screenings at London’s riverside Southbank Centre, with many of the premieres screened simultaneously at movie theaters across the UK

About 37% of the features are directed by women — not yet parity, but up from a quarter four years ago and “heading in the right direction,” festival director Tricia Tuttle said.

The festival opens Oct. 6 with the world premiere of “The Harder They Fall” — a Western from British director Jeymes Samuel with a Black-led cast — and closes Oct. 17 with the European premiere of Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as Shakespeare’s murderous Scottish royals.