Lindsay Shelton

This year's programme offers a rich selection of new films by directors who have proved their talent in previous festivals. Top of my list is Gerard Smyth's Aunty and the Star People,  about the double life of Wellington author Jean Watson. It sounds irresistible. As does Pulp - any film by Florian Habicht is worth seeing. And Friends of Dorothy is the latest work by Australian William Yang who assembles images from the past to tell moving stories which resonate in the present. Features from the past will be unmissable too - specially a new digital restoration of Jean Cocteau's extraordinary Beauty and the Beast from 1946 (I've only ever seen it in an old beaten-up 16mm print), and King Vidor's silent Show People with a raft of 1920s stars led by Marion Davies. From the more recent past, The Galapagos Affair sounds an extraordinary tale, as does Jodorowsky's Dune, a masterpiece that was never made by the director whose El Topo created a sensation in Wellington in the 1970s.  I am also looking forward to seeing the latest work by some of the top French movie stars - Deneuve in In the Courtyard, Huppert in Folies Bergere, and Devos in Violette. Not forgetting (not French, I know) Scarlett Johansson as a sexy alien cruising Glasgow in Under the Skin.  And finally - unmissable of course - Godard's Goodbye to Language 3D.

Lindsay Shelton is founding director of the Wellington Film Festival which he ran for its first ten years. He's now editor of wellington.scoop.co.nz