Jean-Pascal Hattu's debut unravels the emotional complexities of a romantic entanglement between an inmate, his wife and a prison guard.

Set in a future where humans convert excrement into energy, this lowbrow, animated action/comedy from Korea is a jet-propelled, politically incorrect and completely vulgar spectacle.

Orphanage worker Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) returns to Copenhagen to confront his past in this rich, harrowing and transformative family drama directed by Susanne Bier (Open Hearts).

Idiosyncratic doco maker Les Blank journeys to China with a devoted tea drinker and trader for an inside look at tea and the culture that spawned it.

Ric Burns's imposing four-hour portrait tracks the painfully shy, sickly genius through his 1960s New York heyday to substantiate the claim that he is the greatest artist of the 20th century.

Art, fun, folly, fairytales and folkstories: A fine collection of outstanding animation, tested by our most demanding audience, aged between four and seven.

Drawn from a record 2,200 submissions, this diverse selection of 15 short animations from France, South Africa, Taiwan and beyond showcases an incredible swirl of styles, techniques and genres.

Wellington architect Bill Toomath talks about his life and architecture in the context of a new room he has added to his house that's based on a famous Renaissance painting.

Unbelievable true story of Rev Richard Gazowsky, who is convinced God wants him to make a multi-million dollar Christian Star Wars – even though Gazowsky has never watched a single film in his life.

Sarah Polley's brave, mature directorial feature debut ruminates on an elegant Ontario couple (Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent) who face the spectre of Alzheimer's. Adapted from an Alice Munro story.

In director Abderrahmane Sissako's fierce and unforgettable piece of political art, the African nation puts economic globalisation on trial in a hot, dusty courtyard in Mali's capital Bamako.

This splendidly imaginative doco traces a lock of Beethoven's hair from 19th-century Vienna to the present day, when modern forensics uncovers the truth about the composer's hearing and temperament.

A handsome Mexican soccer star whose career was cut short by tragedy finds solace with a pregnant waitress in this sensitive, transcendent film set in New York, that won the People's Choice at Toronto.

Eccentric sequel to Luis Buñuel's shocking Belle de jour reunites Henri (Michel Piccoli) and Séverine (Bulle Ogier) after 39 years. Directed by Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira.

Paul Verhoeven's brash, provocative tale of a sexy Jewish singer who seduces the head of the Dutch Gestapo is also a bold, wilfully irreverent and morally complex film about the Holocaust.

When the first blind man to climb Mt Everest, Erik Weihenmayer, challenges six blind Tibetan school children to climb its 23,000-ft neighbour, Lhakpa Ri, failure is not an option.

An unruly farce set in an office, Lars von Trier's latest provocation skewers ethics, capitalism and his own filming methods (camera and sound are operated randomly by a computer).

In this darkly comic Norwegian fable, a man wakes up in a Kafka-esque world of sterile office buildings, ineffective alcohol and impeccably tasteful interior design.

In his latest fever-dream, Guy Maddin tunnels deep into the slag heap of 20s and 30s cinema he has made his home. Satanic orphans, a masked lesbian wedding and turpentine baths stand in for plot.

In 2004, Eric Steel captured footage of 23 fatal leaps from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, then uncovered their wrenchingly poignant stories. His doco transcends voyeurism for a dignified examination of death.

Solitary oddball Vincent mopeds through the Scottish highlands with a dream of healing the community's loneliness with a mobile disco. A film about the joy of music and a yearning for the ecstasy of art.

Beautifully restored print of Paul Leni's 1927 silent classic in which a young woman must spend the night alone in a creepy gothic mansion. Accompanied by the exhilarating score (with theremin) composed by Festival guest Neil Brand, conducted by US maestro Timothy Brock.

This tough, compelling Icelandic entry in this year's Oscars centres on a struggling single mother of four and the violent underworld enforcer who returns to Reykjavik to seek out their 12-year-old son.

Alister Barry's new film documents the 11-year war that raged between teachers and the New Right after Tomorrow's Schools shifted education towards a market economy model.

In three episodes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Uzak, Clouds of May) subverts the expectations of romantic comedy to follow a feckless architect's troubled relationship with his much younger girlfriend.

This exposé of the thriving cocaine trade in Florida during the late 70s and early 80s is an unapologetically sensational and furiously entertaining example of doco filmmaking as tabloid crack.

Director Shirley Horrocks explores the highly creative and under-rated New Zealand subculture of comics and graphic novels, revealing its rich local history and international following.

This documentary valentine to the pleasures of cinema looks at four independent theatre owners in very different parts of the world who dedicate their lives to showing films.

This entertaining and disquieting encounter with four master con men never resorts to sensationalism, although the outrageous acts they divulge are astounding.

Anton Corbijn's visually arresting biopic of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis casts an insightful, poignant and very human light on a British rock legend. As Curtis, relative newcomer Sam Riley is uncanny.

Daniel Auteuil and Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Red Lights) play an artist and his gardener in this charming Gallic take on the male mid-life crisis. Adapted from artist Henri Cueco's memoir.

Local doco-maker Jess Feast tells the fascinating, vibrant story of über-cool Berlin burlesque bar White Trash Fast Food and the diehard communist neighbour who tried to shut it down.

Fascinating documentary story of Private James Dresnok, who deserted the US army in 1962 to build a life in communist North Korea, where he raised a family and became a propaganda film star.

The second instalment of Timur Bekmambetov's hot-blooded, hyperkinetic vampire trilogy set in decaying post-communist Russia feels beefier, flashier and twice as hallucinogenic.

Frank Oz (The Stepford Wives) changes direction with a riotous British comedy about a man (Matthew Macfadyen) who returns home for his father's funeral, only to face a madhouse.

Compulsively watchable two-part J-pop saga of supernatural vigilantism run amok, centring on a college student who possesses a notebook that allows him to kill anyone whose name he writes in it.

Causing a furore in the US, this doco poses important questions about terrorism and the Bush administration, using the fictional scenario of George W. Bush's assassination in October 2007.

Jaw-dropping story of Donald Crowhurst, the "Sunday sailor" who set off in 1968, in an unfinished vessel, on a race to circumnavigate the globe.

A highly charged and confrontational doco which talks to Father Oliver O'Grady, the California paedophile who molested children over a 30-year period from within the sanctuary of the Catholic church.

Seven well-known artists, including Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle), Larry Clark and Sam Taylor-Wood, were told to go forth and make pornography: the result is this cerebral, challenging series of short films.

Deeply affecting doco telling the story of the US Marine Captain who became a political activist after witnessing the systematic genocide of black African citizens in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Surreal, awe-inspiring, innovative missives from the world of digital animation, selected to showcase the detail, depth of field and full resonant sound that only a cinema can deliver.

The familiar tale of the rookie crook rising up the ranks by any means possible gets a fresh, invigorating polish in this richly entertaining, emotionally textured Korean gangster movie.

Great Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke's documentary companion piece to his latest feature, Still Life (also in Festival), captures the life and monumental canvases of artist Liu Xiao-dong.

Set over one hot night in the once-glamorous tourist resort of Acapulco, this sensitive, authentic Mexican drama weaves together three stories of love, despair and unexpected compassion.

Local Oscar nominee Taika Waititi's debut feature is a deliciously tangy, deadpan love story between two incurable fancy dress and gaming geeks, Lily (Loren Horsley) and Jarrod (Jemaine Clement).

Turkish-German director Fatih Akin's (Head-On) masterful new film tracks the emotional arcs of six people – four Turks and two Germans – as they criss-cross through love, tragedy and borders.

A fitting documentary eulogy to one of New Zealand's most underrated Modernist artists, Edith Collier (1885-1964), whose talent was sadly crushed by unsympathetic Victorian tastes.

Robert Blake stars as "Big John" Wintergreen, the diminutive chopper cop adrift in a flotsam of corrupt lowlifes, in this modern existential Western that oozes 1970s charm.

Tense, claustrophobic Danish doco counts down the ten days leading up to the 2005 Afghanistan election, focusing on brave, controversial female candidate Malalai Joya.

Hong Kong action king Johnnie To directs an exhilaratingly heroic bloodshed throwback that reunites the gang from To's previous smash The Mission for a bullet-ridden rumble in Macau.

Experimental, impressionistic work of sublime poetic vision from musician-turned-filmmaker Pierce, whose exquisitely wrought film fractions explore the emotional complexities of life.

Former Johnny To writer Yau Nai-hoi makes an astonishing directorial debut with this slick, fast and often furious Hong Kong crime caper centring on a high-tech special surveillance unit.

This tale of five male friends in a Swedish coastal town blurs realism and fiction to create a palpable sense of doom. Astonishing debut from director Jesper Ganslandt, who plays himself in the film.

In this electrifying espionage thriller set in a paranoid post-Cold War Europe, a French Secret Service agent (Juliette Binoche) tracks her missing father (Nick Nolte), who is a former colleague turned spy.

Bob Rafelson examines the patrician American way of life in his second feature starring Jack Nicholson as a former classical music prodigy turned redneck oil-rigger and drifter.

Heddy Honigmann's (Dame la Mano) mesmerising tour of artists' graves in Paris' Père-Lachaise cemetery eschews morbidity for a moving celebration of art and the human spirit.

A feisty Prussian spinster who teaches piano to prison inmates is drawn to a convicted murderer who was once a musical prodigy in this surprising, compelling and often electrifying human drama.

Fascinating historical doco weaves a riveting high-stakes narrative around the 1956 Olympic water polo semi-final between Hungary and the Soviet Union, which turned into a bloodbath.

This selection of short films to mark the 20th anniversary of the Wellington Fringe Festival includes early work by Robert Sarkies, Glenn Standring, Greg Page, Sima Urale and Jonathan Brough.

Using sound, image and text, these four ingenious live film explorations from Australia, New Zealand and the US redefine the frontiers of cinematic possibility. Presented at the majestic St James Theatre.

Esteemed Georgian director Otar Iosseliani (Farewell Terra Firma) applies his surrealist approach to the story of a government minister turned hobo on the streets of Paris.

Visually astounding Italian epic following a turn-of-the-century family across the ocean to the New World. "Unveils the dark side of America's immigrant history." — indieWIRE

Riveting doco focuses on symbiotic (and often delusional) relationships between boy-toy hosts and adoring, champagne-swilling female clients in Osaka's most popular host bar.

Adaptation of Dito Montiel's mid-80s memoir of life on the hot, sweat-soaked streets of New York, recalling early Scorsese, as two lives converge on tragedy. Stars Robert Downey Jr and Shia LaBeouf.

Bahman Ghobadi's (A Time for Drunken Horses) beautiful new film sees an ailing father lead his sons to Iraq to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein. Gritty, poetic and alive with rousing Kurdish music.

Ryan Gosling is phenomenal as the dynamic junkie teacher at a tough inner-city school whose after-hours activities collide with those of one of his young female students, who is also a fledgling drug runner.

This selection of beautiful animations have all been painstakingly hand-painted upon thousands of pieces of glass, hardboard or card to create the 24 frames you need for every single second of film.

Pre-fab four TV phenomenon The Monkees committed career hara-kiri by starring in this psychedelic, mind-bending weird-fest penned by Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson in 1968.

Is the ubiquitous Helvetica typeface a modernist masterpiece or the McDonald's of graphic design? As designers take sides, the philosophy, politics and recent history of design is laid bare.

Poetic Western directed by and starring Peter Fonda as a drifter who attempts to reconcile with his abandoned wife and daughter. This restored version of a neglected 1970s masterpiece will dazzle audiences.

Tony Ayres' poignant autobiographical feature follows the turbulent life of a glamorous Hong Kong nightclub singer (Joan Chen) who emigrates to Melbourne with her two children in 1964.

This wilfully idiosyncratic take on Don Quixote is a pared back, wry escapade in which the famous elderly gent and his sidekick stumble around a beautiful Catalan countryside rustling with life.

Blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, a scriptwriter follows his main character on a journey to a northern Chinese village, where the young man has fled after murdering his lover.

Inspiring, entertaining doco on Zen priest and holistic chef Edward Espe Brown, who imparts philosophy, along with cooking advice, to an adoring group of devotees.

Ravishing, elegiac dream of a film from Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn, The Wayward Cloud), featuring parallel narratives and starring Lee Kang-sheng as a brutally beaten hobo and a man in a coma.

The extraordinary contribution of the world's most dedicated Nazi hunter, who lost his mother, sister and 87 other relatives in the Holocaust, is outlined in this eventful and engaging profile.

Hugely enjoyable saga from veteran Czech director Jirí Menzel following a diminutive opportunist on his journey from 1930s bus boy and hedonist to millionaire hotelier and disgraced Nazi collaborator.

David Lynch's latest surreal work disturbs a dysfunctional thriller with erotic anarchy as he hurtles towards a shocking, confronting and utterly uncompromising close. Riveting, hypnotic, dreamlike.

Crafty six-year-old Vanya escapes his squalid Russian orphanage (and adoption by an eager Italian family) to search the streets of St Petersburg for the mother who abandoned him.

Frank, fly-on-the-wall account of an Evangelical summer camp in North Dakota where children learn the evils of profanity, abortion and witchcraft – and salute a cardboard cut-out of President Bush.

Director Julien Temple's (The Filth and the Fury) visually exciting, high-octane rock 'n' roll history of 1970s punk sensation The Clash and its charismatic frontman and singer Joe Strummer.

The makers of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner focus on the historical moment when Inuit came into contact with European explorers and Christianity. Richer, deeper and more demanding than its predecessor.

Completed in 1977, Charles Burnett's fictional portrait of a working-class black family living in a broken-down home in a bombed-out stretch of Los Angeles is a lost American neorealist masterpiece.

Two friends investigate America's scariest, most planted, processed, subsidised GE crop: corn. "As relevent as Super Size Me and as important as An Inconvenient Truth." — Austin Chronicle

An all-night FM talk jockey (Jack Nicholson) is drawn into the Atlantic City scams of his estranged brother (Bruce Dern) in Bob Rafelson's original, eccentric and affecting 1972 film.

Eight Wellington 20-somethings are locked in an agonising merry-go-round of unexpressed lust and longing in Alexander Greenhough and Elric Kane's winning new feature.

This extraordinary montage film is entirely narrated by Cobain, with evocative images showing where he lived, went to school, worked and played.

The extraordinary true story of a Kiwi couple – journalist Helen Smyth and Tim Rose, of Havana Coffee Works – who went to Cuba and accidentally befriended one of Fidel Castro's top spies.

The talent and extraordinary spirit of French chanteuse Edith Piaf is celebrated in this monumental biopic which covers the entirety of her tragic life from 1920s rural France to 1960s New York.

Inspired director Pascale Ferran returns to the screen with this magnificent and moving exploration of love and desire, which scooped five prizes at the prestigious French César awards.

Lala Rolls (Children of the Migration) directs this gentle, moving doco-portrait of Maori artist Darcy Nicholas, whose work is held in public collections in New Zealand, Britain and Germany.

Jack Nicholson is one of two Navy men who decide to show a young offender a good time before he gets locked up. Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude) directs a script by Robert Towne (Chinatown).

Peter Bogdanovich's classic debut feature (1971) is an evocative, bittersweet coming-of-age set in small-town Texas in the early 1950s, starring a young Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd.

Constructed around a 2005 tribute performance at Sydney's Opera House, this is a celebratory mix of concert and documentary. Includes appearances by Cohen, Bono, Nick Cave and Beth Orton.

Robert Altman's (The Player, Gosford Park) take on Philip Marlowe relocates the detective to cynical, modern Los Angeles. Purists were incensed, but this is one of the finest movies of the 70s.

Made to honour the 50th anniversary of the World Press Photo of the Year, this doco tells the story behind four iconic images – of the Vietnam War, Salvador Allende, Tiananmen Square and the Gulf War.

This brutal and lurid melodrama about a charismatic small town psycho who falls for a high-class beauty marks the debut of a director who aims to put the "hurt" back into the stagnant thriller genre.

A frank yet celebratory behind-the-music documentary on cult American psychedelic rock group Love.

This stunning shockumentary is a visceral immersion in contemporary Brazilian street life, connecting the unlikely dots between black-market frog farming, plastic surgery and kidnapping in São Paulo.

Staggering, unconventional doco of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky who marries art with environmentalism in monolithic portraits of industrial landscapes such as China's Three Gorges Dam.

Less than flattering portrait of controversial Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) made by two Canadian filmmakers who started out as admiring fans.

Low-key, ironic and very sharp Japanese comedy which uncovers sexual deviancy and family dysfunction in the wake of a small-town crime. From the director of last year's Festival hit Linda, Linda, Linda.

Incomplete documentary about the late, great historian Michael King, who talks candidly in this film about milestones in his professional life.

Angelina Jolie stars as the impassioned heroine at the centre of Michael Winterbottom's urgent docudrama retelling of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's abduction by Islamic militants.

Award-winning documentary about an eccentric elderly man who dreams of turning his castle into a monastery and the Russian Orthodox nun with ideas of her own about how it should be done.

Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire) takes a witty look at the meaning of friendship in this French romp about mid-life crisis and borderline personality dysfunction. Stars Daniel Auteuil.

Enthralling doco gets up close to four-year-old New York painting genius Marla Olmstead and her family. Is Marla the actual artist or does she receive all sorts of "coaching" from her devoted dad?

Dark, gripping, multi-narrative thriller set in rural Spain. "Exciting picture of a crime and how its ripples beget other acts of turpitude and create new victims." — The Observer

An eccentric hit man resolves to kill only the rude and bad mannered in this genre-bending mélange of film noir, slapstick comedy and hyperbolic violence. A Korean Tarantino is born.

Melbourne filmmaker Matthew Saville crafts a disturbing account of urban fear and isolation as police investigate a senseless commuter train shooting.

Two long-time friends (Daniel London and singer Will Oldham) reassess their bond on a mountain camping trip. A quiet, shimmering elegy to lost friendship from director Kelly Reichardt.

A sincere, romantic indie musical set in Dublin, the music capital of the world. Two street musicians, a boy and a girl, strike up an intimate friendship that leads to tentative collaboration.

In anime master Kon Satoshi's (Millennium Actress) latest exhilarating thriller/detective story, a shrink must recover the machine that allows psychotherapists to alter their patients' dreams.

With this intimate character study of an angel-faced skateboarder (and accidental killer), Gus Van Sant returns with one of the most moving and delicately felt films of his fascinating career.

Local director Glenn Standring's second feature is a sci-fi horror set in a retro-futuristic New Zealand where humans coexist with a race of intellectual vampires called The Brotherhood.

Faithful, opulent and visceral adaptation of Patrick Süskind's bestselling tale of an obsessive parfumier on a murderous quest in 18th-century France. Directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run).

This visually stunning Swedish eco-documentary visits 25 countries to offer irrefutable evidence of global warming in the wider context of catastrophic changes to the natural environment.

In this irreverent revision of Breakfast at Tiffany's, a cunning gold-digger (Audrey Tautou) meets her match in an opportunistic waiter who poses as a handsome millionaire to win her love.

Yannick and Jérémie Renier (The Child) play two adult brothers locked in an unhealthy relationship with their mother (Isabelle Huppert), who fatefully embarks on a new romance.

Director Shirley Horrocks tracked landscape painter, photographer and Arts Foundation Laureate John Reynolds from the Sydney Biennale to Otago and the Kaipara for this intimate portrait.

A young girl's 15th birthday bash is derailed by an immaculate conception in this saucy, heartfelt exploration of love, family and neighbourhood gentrification set in a Latino suburb of Los Angeles.

Entertaining, humorous and original documentary by Gary Burns and Jim Brown exploring the legacy of suburbia, from the rise of the motorcar to the arrival of the "new urbanists".

Set in a notorious Glasgow housing estate monitored by surveillance cameras, this bristling, darkly erotic thriller about a woman hell-bent on retribution won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Maverick director Werner Herzog treads close to the mainstream with this tale of a German-American fighter pilot (Christian Bale) who escapes a Viet Cong POW camp in Laos in 1965.

Japan's foremost spookmeister Kurosawa Kiyoshi (Cure, Charisma, Pulse) expertly applies his brooding and atmospheric cinema of unease to this police procedural ghost story.

A down-on-his-luck truck driver is driven to commit a shocking crime, after which he is shaken by remorse, in Turkish director Tayfun Pirselimoglu's Dostoevskian second feature.

Eric Bana stars as a troubled Eastern European immigrant in this heartbreaking family drama of displacement and emotional dependency set in the backblocks of 1960s rural Victoria.

Stirring true story of 94-year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock who walked across America to rally against the influence of big money in elections. Four years later, she runs for the US Senate.

Situated somewhere between home movie, doco and experimental film, this three-part narrative deals with murder, nature and children in Paris' colourful and multi-ethnic 18th arrondissement.

Closely shot, fast-cut drama about an angry, idealistic young prison tutor forced into an explosive face-off with his father, a convicted murderer: the Italian debut of the year.

The definitive portrait of Scott Walker, rock's most fascinating and elusive outsider.

Sarah Polley stars as an emotionally scarred young woman who embarks on a tentative romance with an oil-rig worker in this delicate piece of artistry from Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me).

Brit director Christopher Smith follows Creep with this horror-comedy about a group of office workers on a team building exercise in Hungary who are hunted by unidentified backwoods maniacs.

Your heart will open up and bleed for Maggie Gyllenhaal as the recovering junkie (and desperate cherry-bomb hellion) who is determined to win back her daughter after three years in jail.

This ingenious triptych of terror starts off as a love story before descending into one huge ball of bloody chaos with the arrival of a malignant signal that causes viewers to turn totally homicidal.

A gentle satire which pokes fun at the Southern California Young American Miss pageant and the hollow post-Vietnam values of America. Condenses all that was groovy about the 70s into two hours.

The battle between the fervent architect Santiago Calatrava and the solid bureaucrats who oppose the construction of his visionary "Turning Torso" apartment building in Malmö, Sweden.

Tilda Swinton is the pregnant forensic psychologist sent to interview a teenage Christian girl accused of killing her newborn baby. A lacerating drama which exposes the hidden terrors of women.

Focusing on the Three Gorges Dam, China's most exciting young director, Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, The World), delivers yet another sublime meditation on the country's ceaseless progress.

Karim Aïnouz follows his dynamic debut Madame Satã with the subtle, sensitive story of a young mother just trying to get by when she returns to her small home town from bustling São Paulo.

A lady doctor interviews an army doctor in the jungle. Playful, funny and touching study in time and transformation from leading Thai experimental filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady).

The son of Miyazaki Hayao (Spirited Away) directs this adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's popular fantasy novel in which a teenage prince teams up with a powerful wizard to save the realm from evil.

György Pálfi (Hukkle) clocks in with a ghastly, audacious assault on the senses, involving a male genetic disorder that results in more body dysfunction than Cronenberg's entire oeuvre.

Two street urchins with magical powers are pitched against the yakuza in this dark, noirish fairytale set in Tokyo. This first American-directed anime has cult classic written all over it.

A couple living on a Romanian country estate are terrorised by intruders for one long, extremely horrifying night. Unrelenting DV-lensed jugular-grabber that will frighten the bejeebers out of you.

Compelling Egyptian documentary following a gang of street girls in Cairo. Rather than wallow in their often agonising plight, director Tahani Rached celebrates their tenacity and spirit.

Indulge your nostalgia with a stunning restoration of the three-screen film made for Expo 70, along with a lighthearted doco on the event and a swinging pop tourist film from 1970.

Three recently discovered experimental silent films featuring Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and The Velvet Underground offer an intriguing alternative viewpoint of life in heady 1960s Factory days.

Hidden desires emerge with mythic potency in this exquisitely beautiful portrait of life in a hard-scrabble hillside village on Turkey's northwest coast.

Riveting chronicle of a 20-year struggle to free an innocent black man of the 1984 rape and murder of a white woman in North Carolina – a racially charged crime which divided the community.

The director of The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros returns with this tale of a sexually rebellious girl whose alcoholic father is the official circumciser in her Filipino jungle village.

Harrowing, heartbreaking doco edited down from 3,000 hours (yes... 3,000!) of home video footage, telling the story of a former primetime newscaster whose addiction to crack destroyed his life.

Director/auteur Monte Hellman's breakout feature is a minimalist existential road movie starring singer James Taylor and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson as a duo on a cross-country race (1971).

An orphaned princess with impossibly long, luxurious ears befriends a unicorn and finds romance with a musical cat in this witty French animated film (with subtitles) for tweens and their parents.

The perils of growing up bohemian are wryly explored in this German feature about a 14-year-old girl who rebels against her parents' chaotic lifestyle of free love and destructive excess.

The spirited 15-year-old daughter of a poor South Indian fisherman determines to master the high-caste Brahmin art of kuchipudi dance. Powerful, luscious and saturated with colour.

"Spellbinding" is the consensus on 74-year-old Peter O'Toole's performance as an actor who traverses the landscape of love with a teenage beauty. Funny, randy script by Hanif Kureishi (The Mother).

Filmed in luscious black and white against the backdrop of Mexico's peasant revolts of the 1970s, an elderly musician smuggles ammunition to guerrilla fighters armed only with his violin.

Superb, impressionistic doco retracing the footsteps of Factory hanger-on Danny Williams, a Harvard student, gifted filmmaker and Andy Warhol's lover, who disappeared in Massachusetts in 1966.

Remarkable, moving documentary following a choir of mostly AIDS orphans from the Agape Orphanage in South Africa on their determined quest to sing in London. Spirited and uplifting.

A charismatic young man pays a devastating price for the social and sexual freedoms of the 1980s in this rich, entertaining French drama directed by André Téchiné (The Wild Reeds, I Don't Kiss).

An austere Dutch drama, punctuated by black comedy, which dissects emotional denial and dysfunctional family dynamics in the wake of a grandfather's announcement that he is going to end his life.

A selection of eclectic, electric and wildly entertaining examples of the art of short film from Romania, Iceland, Germany and the USA, from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.