Germany

This collection of films selected especially for our youngest audience promises some laughs, some frights – and some food for thought. This year’s programme is probably best suited to a slightly older age group (6-10) than previous years’.

This evocative and sensual drama offers a zen-like contemplation of the mystery surrounding the fate of an unwed mother in 18th-century rural Vietnam.

Will they make it? This up-close documentary account of three attempts to swim from Dover to France has us rooting for the marathon swimmers, and provides full immersion in channel swimmer lore.

The highlights in the past year of digital animation, this selection of works favouring abstraction over representation, and experimentation over application.

Is it possible to change the world and still have fun? Jan (hot German star Daniel Brühl), Peter and Jule, the anti-capitalist pranksters in this German hit film, say yes!

This excellent documentary profiles 60s country rock pioneer Gram Parsons. “A portrait of a spoiled, charming, emotionally crippled young man whose shoddy treatment of people was always forgotten as soon as he opened his mouth to sing." — Chicago Reader

Hundreds of clips from hundreds of films are wittily re-edited into a wicked deconstruction of Hollywood’s clichéd portrayal of the tortured artist. Supported by four of the year’s most dazzling experimental shorts.

This spectacular documentary captures the astounding poetry of the world’s toughest cycling race, the century-old Tour de France – and gets in close with the 2003 German T-Mobile team.

Tough, provocative and utterly gripping, this year’s opening night film is a psychological thriller by a filmmaker at the top of his formidable powers. Winner of the best Director Award at Cannes, Hidden is poised to be the year’s most hotly debated film.

This year’s selection of homegrown short films finished on video covers a range of genres from comedy and computer animation through to drama and dance. Each display a unique take on the world – through current events, imagined histories or fable-like fantasies.

From the Shroud of Turin to Graceland, this superbly filmed world tour of venerated objects is like Koyannisqatsi without the bombast, exuding instead a gentle, inquisitive wit.

The two young Palestinian suicide bombers at the centre of this provocatively adrenalised film are hardly the fundamentalist zealots of legend. Paradise Now wracks up the suspense, compounding their moral panic with our own terror of impending detonation.

Family chaos takes to the road in this amiable comedy from Argentina. “Slyly funny… a multi-generational road movie proving that the family that travels together unravels together.” — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

Beautifully crafted documentary and “ear-opening” performance film with percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

Connoisseurs of the deadpan and the droll are invited to check out the Uruguayan sock factory movie. “A pint-size pleasure.” — NY Times

Werner Herzog’s stirring, lyrical documentary about Graham Dorrington, an English engineer who explores the South American rainforest canopy from a silently floating airship.