Set in a spectacular post-apocalyptic world many thousands of years in the future, this riotously inventive, action-packed 3D animation epic from YiLi Studios in China is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are deeply affecting in award-winning roles as a retired Norfolk couple preparing for their 45th-anniversary party, when a ghost from the past raises awkward, long-buried questions.

Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s doco celebrates 50 years of cultural and political debate in the pages of The New York Review of Books with octogenarian editor Robert Silvers, its tireless champion of intellectual freedom.

Decades after it was deemed too deviant to release, 54: The Director’s Cut delivers the full decadent glory of legendary Manhattan disco Studio 54 as its makers intended. With Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek and Mike Myers.

A tightly wound hostage thriller that boasts a commanding lead performance from Tim Roth, 600 Miles is a gritty and authentic portrait of weapon smuggling in Mexico and an auspicious debut for director Gabriel Ripstein.

This speaker-busting documentary celebrates the impressive legacy of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, whose ground-shaking futuristic beats have shaped the course of hip-hop and dance music history.

Andrew Garfield makes a deal with the devil in Ramin Bahrani’s searing moral thriller – a bitter examination of One Percent corruption, personified by Michael Shannon’s duplicitous real estate shark. Co-stars Laura Dern.

This nerve-racking wartime thriller from director Yann Demange and Black Watch writer Gregory Burke stars Jack O’Connell (Starred Up) as a lost British soldier hunted by both sides amid the mayhem of Belfast, 1971.

Charting the ripple effects of real compassion, this inspiring true story follows a spirited young New Zealander’s search for the Rwandan samaritan who assisted him through a dangerous predicament over ten years before.

Can a robot establish a ‘human’ relationship with someone? In this account of a Dutch pilot study, we see three elderly women become attached, with varying degrees of resistance, to a caredroid named Alice.

An intimate, overwhelmingly moving tribute to Amy Winehouse, the great young British soul singer whose talent and charisma brought her more fame than anyone might be able to handle. From the director of Senna.

NZIFF recommends this programme for children aged 9–12.

This year’s big-screen celebration of the latest and best animated shorts is a dazzler, including Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at Sundance.

In three parts, with multiple stories, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ epic Arabian Nights was easily the most original, ambitious – and most critically acclaimed – film at Cannes this year.

In three parts, with multiple stories, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ epic Arabian Nights was easily the most original, ambitious – and most critically acclaimed – film at Cannes this year.

In three parts, with multiple stories, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ epic Arabian Nights was easily the most original, ambitious – and most critically acclaimed – film at Cannes this year.

A kinetic camera films a bicycle ride through the bleak but beautiful Atacama Desert in Chile. Screening with Philip Dadson: Sonics from Scratch.

Dutch director Heddy Honigmann’s beautiful documentary follows Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Russia, Argentina and Soweto, subtly exploring the depth of feeling music stirs in both players and listeners.

Shu Qi plays the eponymous killer in this ravishingly beautiful foray into historical martial arts territory from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien. Winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes.

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) is known as the ‘Father of Yoga in the West’. In this fascinating documentary, produced by the Self-Realization Fellowship who continues his work, we learn about his extraordinary life.

An exuberant return for veteran Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik, this mock historical epic-cum-freeform documentary tells the story of Enrique of Malacca, who was arguably the first person to circumnavigate the earth.

Documenting the frenzy of adulation and controversy that erupted during street artist Banksy’s month-long ‘residency’ in New York, Chris Moukarbel energetically examines issues of art and ownership within the public space.

Astounded by the vibrant music and dance he encountered working in refugee camps in south Sudan, Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka captures an abundance of fiercely articulated cultural identity in this inspiring documentary.

Follow the evolution of Swedish actress Anita Ekberg from 50s Hollywood sex symbol to Euro sex goddess immortalised in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Screening with Listen to Me Marlon.

Loaded with footage of his legendary stunts, and packed with anecdotes almost as hair-raising, this warts-and-all portrait of 70s motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel upholds his primacy in the extreme sports pantheon.

This impressive doco disperses the fog of shame and sensationalism to shed light on the tragedy that made international headlines in 2007 when a young Wainuiomata woman died during a mākutu lifting.

Anticipating the punch-counterpunch set-up of today’s TV punditry, but so much more incisive, the 1968 TV debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr resound again in this terrific documentary.

Three brothers with markedly different approaches to their family’s drug-trade dynasty are drawn back to their Calabrian origins in this darkly elegant gangster drama. “Souls is set to be this year’s mafia pic.” — Variety

Tired of life in the fast lane? Meet the Dull Men’s Club, a group of men quite content with life’s more sedate pleasures. Screening with A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.

There’s the Old Testament, the New Testament and now this surreal and funny Brand New one in which God’s ten-year-old daughter leaves home on a mission to liberate humanity from the bored old man’s destructive whims.

“Matthew Heineman’s troubling documentary about vigilante groups on both sides of the border in the porous region between Mexico and the Southwestern US – an area increasingly taken over by drug cartels – is explosive stuff.” — New York

A hospital full of sleeping soldiers is haunted by matters both historical and intensely personal in the latest gentle and entrancingly beautiful cinematic enigma from the Thai Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

This testimony of shattered young veterans of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War was taped at the time in a project headed by author Amos Oz – and immediately suppressed in the interests of national morale by the Israeli army.

A six-year-old girl gets a chicken for her birthday but isn’t too keen for it to end up in the pot. Screening with Lamb.

With remarkable access, Chinese documentary filmmaker Zhou Hao shadows the mayor of the most polluted city in China and his problematic plan to rehabilitate its image, relocating half a million people to create a historic heritage park.

This affectionate portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold is also a love letter to the culinary and cultural wonders of Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills fine dining to strip mall noodle joints and taco carts.

Actresses Juliet Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz bring ample personal history to this engrossing drama of theatre-world affinities and rivalries from the director of Summer Hours and Irma Vep.

A group of exiled priests find their clandestine existence rudely interrupted in this stunning and dark allegory of the abuses of the Catholic Church from Chilean writer-director Pablo Larraín.

A painstaking restoration of Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 arcane and hypnotising masterpiece, a highly unconventional biopic of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova recounted in a succession of opulently exotic tableaux.

The 27-year partnership of master director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) and radiant muse Gong Li continues with this tragic domestic drama about historic amnesia in the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution.

This provocative legal drama from Mumbai puts a singer on trial for inciting suicide. “A startlingly clear-eyed and multifaceted vision of a society that remains damagingly mired in outmoded traditions.” — Slant

A winning portrait of Italian-born Auckland concert pianist Flavio Villani as he returns like the prodigal son to Italy for his concert debut, scaling one of the summits of the Romantic repertoire.

We all go a little wilder when we think nobody is watching. Loading Docs short screening with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

Sex, violence and scabrous visions of human infamy rule in this international panorama of R-rated animated shorts, including acclaimed new work from several masters of the art.

Two metalheads unleash a satanic riff that opens the gates of hell in this blood-splattered, heavy shredding comedy-horror. The winner of the Make My Horror Movie competition hits home shores after wowing audiences overseas.

“The quasi-Kafkaesque administration holding Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s corrupt dictatorship in place finally gets the first-hand scrutiny it merits in Camilla Nielsson’s riveting documentary.” — Guy Lodge, Variety

An amazing gust of fresh air from the 70s! Starring Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgård and the phenomenal Bel Powley as 15-year-old Minnie, who, brave, funny and ever true to herself, embarks on an affair with an older man.

Three high school geeks, obsessed with 90s hip-hop, get into risky business with molly moving gangstas in this fast, funny LA street comedy, featuring a star-making performance from the charismatic Shameik Moore.

Filmmaker Kim Longinotto accompanies the irrepressible ex-hooker Brenda Myers-Powell as she storms the streets, prisons and high schools of Chicago to inspire young women caught in the cycle of abuse with the story of her escape.

Sidse Babett Knudsen from Borgen and Chiara D’Anna star as lovers locked in a game of mistress and servant in this consummately coutured, surreal fantasy inspired by European soft-core of the 70s.

In this droll, romantic portrait of a young marriage, a hunky soccer pro reaches the end of his career and has to reinvent himself at 35 – with the discreet support and good-humoured indulgence of his lively wife.

A lone shaman inducts two European ethnographers into the mysteries of the Amazon in this breathtakingly photographed tale of exploration, vividly reimagined from the indigenous point of view.

The creators of BBC’s Deep Blue and Earth take us on a spellbinding journey through seven realms of Africa to reveal a natural world more magical and mystical than anything we could imagine.

“This charming and sensitive film about a five-day encounter between acclaimed late author David Foster Wallace and a Rolling Stone journalist is a transfixing human drama.” — Anthony Kaufman, Screendaily

Archival footage and interviews are used to stirring effect in this doco that shows how Britain’s striking miners in 1984 were ill-equipped to face an overwhelming, lengthy and ‘carefully orchestrated state crackdown’.

The ‘clayography’ of a deaf Parisian taxidermist whose world is turned upside down and back to front when a dead pigeon arrives on his doorstep. Screening with Wrinkles.

Observing the planning and construction of New Zealand’s first ‘living building’, Te Wharehou o Tūhoe, Sarah Grohnert draws on images of incredible beauty to portray the profound connection between Ngāi Tūhoe and the land.

This intellectually teasing, near-future drama stars Domhnall Gleeson, with Oscar Isaac as a reclusive AI genius and an eerily bewitching Alicia Vikander as the android Ava, programmed to test the boundaries of creation.

Led by an arresting, coolly clinical performance from Peter Sarsgaard, this potent examination of one of the most controversial figures in social psychology is as indelibly stylised as it is intellectually stimulating.

Girls from across war-torn Ukraine audition to play the role of the gold medal-winning figure skater whose tears of joy once united their troubled country. Screening with The Russian Woodpecker.

A group of cave dwellers beaver away night and day to create an immersive fantasyland, but is it really for the children? Loading Docs short screening with The Brand New Testament.

This gripping existential Western – North African style – sees Viggo Mortensen and Reda Kateb play two men battling to survive in 50s Algeria. Based on a story by Albert Camus and scored by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Truth is more bizarre than fiction in this doco that gets behind the reality TV freakshow tale of a man fighting to recover his mummified leg from the guy who accidentally bought it at a storage-unit auction.

After months of deliberations, Flicks.co.nz are delighted to announce a unique one-off free event, a live script read of the late 90's classic Topless Women Talk About Their Lives.

After the sudden death of her elderly father, a middle-aged daughter uncovers some incriminating evidence in her mother’s freezer. Screening with Latin Lover.

Writer-director-editor-composer Yury Bykov’s electrically paced, flawlessly performed suspense drama is both a brutal metaphor for the corruption of post-Soviet Russia and a furiously entertaining thriller.

A demented mash up of lurid, long-lost movies that never existed, this new work from Canadian genius Guy Maddin plunges a starry art house cast into phantasmagorical scenarios of melodramatic weirdness.

Archival film of Scottish life is shaped into a kaleidoscopic evocation of work and recreation in the 20th century, stirringly scored with original songs by Fife musician/singer/songwriter King Creosote.

Our chador-wearing heroine walks the night-time streets of Bad City sinking her teeth into those who deserve to die. Outrageously languid, this new-school vampire movie is a triumphant first feature for Ana Lily Amirpour.

Newcomer Karidja Touré makes a mesmerising impression as a teenager drawn out of her shell and into a black girl gang in Céline Sciamma’s energetic and deeply empathetic drama, set in the tough suburbs of Paris.

Alex Gibney’s documentary sensation, based on Lawrence Wright’s best-selling history of Scientology and its apostates, gets the big screen treatment it deserves.

“A wicked little chiller full of foreboding and malevolent twists… Convinced their mother is an impostor, twin brothers take charge in this unsettling serving of auteur horror from Austria.” — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Lily Tomlin is perfectly cast as a sharp-tongued, taboo-breaking granny who comes out fighting for her pregnant teenage granddaughter in this constantly surprising comedy-drama from About a Boy director Paul Weitz.

This tense, lavishly staged high-seas drama was produced by Bong Joon-ho and marks a spectacular directorial debut for his Memories of Murder collaborator Shim Sung-bo.

Prolific South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo’s funniest work, Hill of Freedom is a wry, mostly English-language comedy about a Japanese man who pursues a Korean woman to Seoul, hoping to pop the question.

The memoir of a gay love affair that began at school when the author fell for the captain of the football team and ended in tragedy 15 years later is already a classic of Australian literature, and now an inspiring, heartbreaking film.

This rousing history of the ideals and origins of Greenpeace makes lavish use of video archives of early action – and examines the far-reaching conflicts that arose as the founders clashed about tactics and priorities.

In their last film, two documentary masters, Les Blank and Ricky Leacock, get together to chat about films, friends and the joys of French cuisine. “Like a parting gift from them to cinema.” — Jeff Reichert, Reverse Shot

Jon Mikl Thor was a bodybuilding, steel-bending, brick-smashing metal star in the 70s and 80s whose band never quite made it big. Years later, in this funny and endearing doco, he attempts a comeback that nearly kills him.

The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra plus Charlie Chaplin equals glorious Live Cinema. Marc Taddei conducts Chaplin’s score for The Kid, arranged by Carl Davis, and Timothy Brock’s new score for the wildly funny The Immigrant.

“Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Thomas Pynchon’s novel about the death of the hippie counterculture and turned it, reasonably faithfully, into a surreally funny, anxious and beautiful film noir.” — The Telegraph

Over the course of a dinner party in the Hollywood mansion that was once his, the haunted Will is gripped by mounting evidence that his ex and her new friends have a mysterious and terrifying agenda.

Tracing the emigrations of his family over more than half a century, expatriate Iraqi Samir pays homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of a people successively plagued by dictatorship, war and foreign occupation.

Veteran documentary maestro Albert Maysles’ Iris is a captivating salute to a proud flag-bearer of the vanishing quality of fashion individuality, the legendary New York clotheshorse and design darling Iris Apfel.

Guatemala’s active Pacaya volcano is a symbol of both ancient traditions and modern threats in this absorbing, beautifully shot film about the consequences of a peasant girl’s strategy to avoid an arranged marriage.

Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon are indelible as a Manhattan slacker careening out of control and his mother battling cancer in Josh Mond’s intensely immersive first feature.

Viggo Mortensen is a Danish engineer who adopts military garb to search for his fugitive daughter in in the wilderness of 19th-century Patagonia. Lisandro Alonso’s surreal drama is as enigmatic as it is compelling.

Kiwi kinetic artist Joseph Herscher gears up for his first US show where he transforms everyday objects into an intricate Rube Goldberg-style machine that will dress him from head to toe. Screening with Very Semi-Serious.

The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra plus Charlie Chaplin equals glorious Live Cinema. Marc Taddei conducts Chaplin’s score for The Kid, arranged by Carl Davis, and Timothy Brock’s new score for the wildly funny The Immigrant.

Cole Porter’s irreverent take on The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most pleasurable (and fabulously danced) MGM musicals of the 50s – and the only one produced in 3D. With Ann Miller, Howard Keel and Bob Fosse.

The first Ethiopian film ever to play at Cannes is a lovingly crafted tale of a small boy sent with his beloved pet lamb to live with relations in the country – and discovering a culturally inappropriate talent for cooking.

The candid, definitive and hugely entertaining tale of the rise of The Who, named for the cinephilic pair of Swinging Londoners who figured that managing a band would be a great way to get a movie made.

A children’s orchestra playing instruments fashioned from trash brings their impoverished home in Paraguay to the attention of the world in this SXSW Audience Award-winning doco.

The five daughters of a womanising Italian movie star gather to officially commemorate his greatness – and privately sift through the family trash – in this fizzy ensemble comedy, which wittily references Italy’s movie past.

Paul used to steal lawnmowers for a living but when his father died, he promised himself a better life. Screening with Rams.

In an excerpt from a forthcoming feature about his father, Harrod Blank introduces us to the still photography of Les Blank. Screening with How to Smell a Rose.

With never-before-seen photos, audio and film footage, British documentarian Stevan Riley delivers an enthrallingly intimate look at the brilliant, troubled and always charismatic Marlon Brando.

Hip-hop’s hottest young illustrator is a Seattle six-year-old. What starts as an after-school hobby for Yung Lenox and his dad becomes a lifestyle and a business. Screening with Banksy Does New York.

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) casts Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Léa Seydoux in a surreal English-language fable set in a world where singles are forced to couple up or be turned into animals.

Coney Island 1928 is brought to teeming life with the World Premiere performance of a new score by Lawrence Arabia and Carnivorous Plant Society.

Joshua Oppenheimer follows his extraordinary The Act of Killing with an equally revelatory documentary in which boastful perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1965 massacres are confronted by the brother of one of their victims.

“Gaspar Noé may be the only director in history who could make a two-and-a-quarter-hours-long pornographic film in 3D and then have it legitimately described as his least offensive picture to date.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

To the psychiatrists, Mary O’Hagan was just another head case. But where they saw illness, she saw a human experience. Loading Docs short screening with Dreamcatcher.

In this bold debut, popular Italian TV satirist Pierfrancesco Diliberto mixes rights-of-passage comedy with a fearless send-up of the historic underworld murders that have devastated his native Sicily.

Education and divine mission drive this 19th-century French pastoral drama: the true story of deaf-blind Marie Heurtin. Her life transforms with the discovery of language, due to the incredible persistence of a Catholic nun.

The life, music and passionate commitment of the irresistible Mavis Staples are lovingly chronicled in this spirited doco – with help from fans Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Prince.

In a compelling performance that won him the Best Actor Award at Cannes, Vincent Lindon plays a laid-off factory worker battling to fend for his family and retain compassion and integrity at the bottom of the heap.

Scoring its points through clearly stated arguments and pithy humour, Merchants of Doubt examines the methods corporations use to stymie political actions that would be good for public health, but bad for their bottom lines.

A new summit in mountain sports documentary – with characters and a plot to rival many a feature, Meru captures the sheer physical extremity of two attempts to make the first ascent of a precipitous Himalayan peak.

In Nanni Moretti’s mix of wry comedy and sombre family drama, a woman strives to balance life and art as her mother’s health fails – and the actor in the film she’s directing (John Turturro) proves to be a handful.

A class of teenage girls coach their substitute choir teacher through relationship trouble by transforming a heavy metal classic into a feminist anthem. Screening with Princess.

A young mother must come to terms with the consequences of a difficult decision. Screening with The Second Mother.

In her final completed film, playing a dramatic role created by her husband Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe is touching, and radiant as ever, as a showgirl whose intensely sympathetic nature upends the lives of three cowboy drifters.

The emotional roller-coaster of a single mother’s relationship with her ADHD teenage son is rendered with intense sympathy and dramatic flair by 25-year-old director Xavier Dolan. Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize in 2014.

In J.C. Chandor’s intense, 80s-set thriller an ambitious wheeler-dealer on New York’s contested waterfront (Oscar Isaac) tries to detoxify his business, but his Mob daughter wife (Jessica Chastain) has other ideas.

“Five young sisters in a small coastal Turkish town come of age against a backdrop of sun, secrets, and socially-mandated sexual suppression in [this] heartfelt, beautifully performed debut feature.” — Jessica Kiang, The Playlist

An engagingly eccentric and engrossingly literate coming-of-age film from French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin (My Sex Life), featuring Mathieu Amalric and a cast of brilliant young newcomers.

Help give the year’s best New Zealand short films the homegrown recognition they deserve by voting for your favourite at this screening.

Check out the latest and best Māori and Pasifika short films as selected for NZIFF by Leo Koziol, Director of the Wairoa Māori Film Festival, and Craig Fasi, Director of the Pollywood Film Festival.

A middle-aged office lady in Tokyo is given a blonde wig and a new identity by her unconventional English-language teacher. Screening with Hill of Freedom.

The US occupation of Iraq and its violent legacy are recounted, sometimes in graphic detail, in the video diary of Australian journalist Michael Ware who found himself chosen to serve as al-Qaeda’s emissary to the West.

Three sisters in their 20s get to know their teenage half-sister in this charming family drama, beautifully accentuated with flavours and sensations of its unmistakably Japanese setting. From the director of I Wish.

Tim Wong’s elegantly assembled and illustrated film essay contemplates the prevailing image of our national cinema while privileging some of the images and image-makers displaced by the popular view of filmmaking in New Zealand.

The tension between father and wilful son is only intensified when papa is the leader of a murderous cult. An intelligently controlled drama highlighted by standout performances from Vincent Cassel and newcomer Jeremy Chabriel.

This powerful film about police overkill makes its case through the experience and research of the former lawman who founded Utah’s first SWAT team, then saw it shoot down a member of his own family 33 years later.

Present-day art world stars pay tribute in a lavishly illustrated profile of the arts patron extraordinaire who transformed a modest fortune and adventurous taste into one of the premier collections of 20th-century art.

In 1979 a little-known pioneer makes the first modern bungee jump off the Pelorus Bridge in Marlborough. A true story of Kiwi innovation and mateship. Screening with Sunshine Superman*.

In this challenging yet open-minded doco by a young Swedish-Danish couple, Florida sex offenders preparing to re-enter society talk about their guilt and the barriers to rehabilitation. Special Jury Award winner at Sundance.

As deeply fascinated by the conceptual as the biographical, this comprehensive portrait of one of our great experimental artists is essential viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in New Zealand art and music.

The director and riveting star of Barbara reunite for another moving film noir-inflected tale of love and profound suspicion, this time set amidst the reconstruction of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

The deeply eccentric Roy Andersson’s meticulously mounted comic sketches move from historic fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as he muses on humanity’s inescapable absurdity. Golden Lion, Best Film, Venice Film Festival 2014.

New Zealand artists are often called upon to engage in ‘place-making’ projects. These 11 works find contemporary cracks and crevices in the heroic landscape tradition.

Completed in 1974 and withheld from exhibition until now, Les Blank’s legendary documentary about musician Leon Russell mixes live and studio performances into an amazing time capsule from the heart of 70s rock.

Russian director Konchalovsky follows a rural postman on rounds that cover tiny lakeside villages in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia in this affectionate, unvarnished, ravishingly shot portrait of a vanishing culture.

Kim Webby’s background in investigative journalism is put to riveting use in this documentary about Tame Iti and the Urewera Four, taking a criminal case of national interest to explore a greater social issue.

This provocative first film by a young Israeli filmmaker shows us the dislocated world of a young girl reaching puberty in the hothouse atmosphere of her mother’s intense sexual relationship with a younger man.

This unsettling look into indoctrination within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is another essential work from one of the world’s finest documentary filmmakers. Music and narration by Nick Cave.

Director John Boorman’s comic memoir of postwar days as an unwilling conscript in the British Army is steeped in bittersweet nostalgia for misspent youth, first love and a Britain that faced the future by clinging to the past.

Handsomely shot for the giant screen, this story of feuding brothers in a remote valley in Iceland begins as an oddball comedy about sheep farming and grows into a moving tale about a priceless rural heritage under threat.

An elderly woman is haunted by the sacrifices she made for her family in this tense, moving and beautifully acted drama that highlights historic amnesia and the growing generation gap in contemporary China.

“Gabe Polsky’s electrifying look at a once-unbeatable Soviet hockey team and the link between sports and politics… deserves a big boo-yah from audiences for being illuminating and hugely entertaining.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders, personal trainers in an Austin gym, and their new New York schlub client, Kevin Corrigan, embark on colliding paths to self-improvement in Andrew Bujalski’s wry rom com.

A young man returns home to Wanganui to discover the difficulty of juggling friends, parents, magic mushrooms and several thousand chickens. Screening with James White.

A historic wooden Chinese sailing junk that crossed the Pacific in 1955 makes an even more improbable return journey after the family of its original sailors campaign to save it from the scrapheap and bring it home.

The Sundance Grand Jury prizewinner for World Cinema Documentary is a scarier-than-fiction investigation of the Chernobyl disaster, headed up by an eccentric young artist, and abetted by the fearless filmmakers.

The latest French biopic of the iconic fashion designer is a heady experience, stunningly realised without official YSL approval, and concentrating on the decade that culminated with a triumphant collection in 1976.

Brazilian actresses Regina Casé and Camila Márdila shared a Special Jury Prize at Sundance for their performances as a good-hearted housemaid at odds with her progressive teenage daughter in this keenly observed family drama.

Ethan Hawke’s music-laden documentary ushers us into the company of octogenarian former concert pianist and tireless teacher Seymour Bernstein, and invites us to share his humour, vitality and penetrating wisdom.

Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom’s superb doco captures the 2014 climbing season on Everest from the point of view of Sherpa Phurba Tashi, including the tragic avalanche and its aftermath.

All the anger, joy and turmoil of the 60s–70s feminist explosion comes alive in a vivid documentary, blending the recollections of key US campaigners with archival action likely to astound anyone who wasn’t there.

New Zealand-born Margot Nash scrutinises the memories and mementoes of her childhood to understand the unhappiness of her parents, and the corrosive instability of the household from which she fled as a young woman in the early 70s.

Acclaimed London artist and designer Yolanda Sonnabend is obliged to share the grand family home she’s made so flamboyantly her own with her scientist brother in this new doco from This Way of Life director Thomas Burstyn.

An enthralling reinterpretation of Irish folktales… Sophisticated enough to appeal to adults and packed with enough humour and adventure to work for youngsters, Song of the Sea is a real animated gem.

“The suspense and pleasure of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s talking-and-tentacles horror romance Spring lies in discovering what shape the film is going to take.” — Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice

Lavishly illustrated with long-lost motor racing footage and rich in interviews with the veteran drivers who were there, this doco explores the making of Steve McQueen’s ill-fated Hollywood epic, Le Mans.

Filled with his spectacular footage, this doco retraces the exploits of the late Carl Boenish, an aerial cinematographer and the father of the extreme sport of BASE jumping.

Drawing on the rich and lurid vein of Neapolitan fairy tales, Matteo Garrone’s lavish, eye-popping fantasy thrusts a stellar international cast into its wildly baroque world of kings, queens, hags and monsters.

An unconventional documentary portrait of a father and his middle-aged son. Screening with The End of the Tour*.

Shot on iPhone and looking fantastic, Sean Baker’s R-rated comedy storms the streets, doughnut shops, brothels and clubs of West Hollywood as two transgender BFFs hunt down the ‘bitch’ who did them wrong.

Filmed over nine months of night shoots, the hypnotically immersive Tchoupitoulas shows us nightlife in and around New Orleans’ French Quarter through the eyes of astounded children.

Pretending to be a taxi driver negotiating the streets of Tehran, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi makes a fascinating, surprisingly entertaining movie about his own role as a forbidden storyteller and life in Iran today.

Winner of the Panorama Audience Award in Berlin, Tell Spring Not to Come This Year takes us into the dark heart of the forgotten ‘War on Terror’ as Afghani forces struggle to fight on after foreign forces have evacuated.

As the beat drops, can Tihei find his words? Redemption comes unscripted. Loading Docs short screening with Dope.

Shirley Horrocks’ doco sheds new light on the life and art of Tom Kreisler, a 20th-century New Zealand painter with scant interest in landscape but a strong affinity with Mexican traditions and the wit and verve of Pop Art.

NZIFF recommends this programme for children aged 4–8.

This strange and original multi-award winner from Ukraine employs a deaf cast to enact its lacerating vision of teenage prostitution and gang war brutality in a Kiev boarding school.

In the post-apocalyptic future of 1997, Turbo Kid must face down an evil warlord and rescue the girl of his dreams. This retro sci-fi delight is packed with heart, humour and non-stop geysers of blood.

Suraj Sharma, the star of Life of Pi, makes a moving Indian indie debut in this bittersweet 80s-set drama about a young man from a mountain village who sets off to find the older brother who’s filled his head with dreams of America.

In the near future a cast of unrelated characters come together in the ghostly shadow of an unfinished skyscraper on a desolate Russian plain. “A ravishingly shot, thought-provoking triumph.” —Screendaily

Discover the importance of furnishings in the 50s Hollywood films of Douglas Sirk, especially the pejoratively named, vanity table. Screening with Women He’s Undressed.

New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff introduces his stable of oddball artists and guides us through the processes and philosophies that have kept publication in the magazine so highly prized for decades.

An after-midnight flirtation on the streets of Berlin gets thrillingly side-tracked by another chase entirely. Filmed in a single real-time take, it’s an edit-free pièce de résistance of acting, directing and mobile camerawork.

A tiny North Dakota town wakes to a nightmare when a notorious white supremacist moves in and tries to take over in this gripping portrait of conflicting notions of freedom in a community under siege.

In this affecting documentary portrait of a latter-day cowboy and lawman, the peace of two small cattle towns on opposite sides of the Texas–Mexico border is threatened by the shadow of Mexican drug cartels.

A shy girl makes a mysterious new friend while convalescing in a sleepy seaside village in this gorgeous Studio Ghibli adaptation of the children’s novel by Joan G. Robinson. Animated by Yonebayashi Hiromasa (Arrietty).

A shy girl makes a mysterious new friend while convalescing in a sleepy seaside village in this gorgeous Studio Ghibli adaptation of the children’s novel by Joan G. Robinson. Animated by Yonebayashi Hiromasa (Arrietty).

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are a middle-aged couple seduced by the attention of super-hip young Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried in this pointed and funny New York comedy about acting your age.

The former king of New Zealand pro-wrestling-turned-small-town recluse is challenged by his best friend to reconnect with his glory days of battle. Loading Docs short screening with I Am Thor.

Raised a child of ‘White Australia’, photographer and performer William Yang traces his genealogy as born-again Chinese in this charming documentary tribute to the sustaining power of family ties.

In this stranger-than-fiction doco, we meet six brothers who have spent their entire lives locked by their father into their Manhattan apartment – where they watch movies obsessively and film their own ingenious re-enactments.

Gillian Armstrong’s doco celebrates the colourful Orry-Kelly, the Australian-born designer who dressed Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot and Bette Davis in many of her greatest roles.

With a soundtrack you can sing along to, this spirited doco celebrates the hitherto anonymous LA session musicians who enlivened hit LPs by The Byrds, Cher, Nancy and Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Monkees and many more.

The subject of old age gets the kind of attention it deserves but is too rarely afforded in this funny, affecting and sugar-free animated tale of the survival strategies devised by two old men in a nursing home.

Miike returns to the demented brilliance of his V-cinema roots with a martial arts extravaganza which sees a clan of vampire yakuzas take on an international criminal syndicate led by a kick-ass giant frog mascot.