The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival

A Catalan retelling of the three wise men's journey to see the newborn baby Jesus.

A voyage through a Lebanese underworld, named for Rossellini's Rome Open City.

Indonesian master Garin Nugroho interweaves three stories about women, births and deaths in Bali.

Stylish and unsettling, a French adaptation of John Cheever's suburban-dystopia novel Bullet Park, starring Jean-Marc Barr.

Mike Figgis' latest digital experiment, a study of desire and moral boundaries set against the backdrop of the Gumball 3000 rally.

Sandro Aguilar's haunting, formally ambitious debut immerses the viewer in a series of uncanny scenes and signals the arrival of a striking new talent.

A Western spoof from India: the tale of a cowboy from south India who fights to protect the lives of cows and comes up against McDosa, a no-good fast-food chain.

Already a huge sleeper hit in the US, a beautifully nuanced story of a thirtysomething finally coming of age, and a personal and poetic tribute to New York bohemia.

Two Russian soldiers capture a Chechen in this adaptation of Vladimir Makanin's unusual story of war in the Caucasus.

A bleak and poetic tale of a Moscow pickpocket and his friendship with a 12-year-old accomplice.

Beautiful Losers director discusses the themes of artistic vision and integrity raised in his film.

A suitably slack and airy-cool documentary about the Lower East Side artists of early-90s New York – Harmony Korine now the best-known among them – before they got pulled into the mainstream.

Part-fiction, part-documentary, this beguiling film from seventysomething Spanish director Pere Portabella offers an intelligent and witty treatment of Bach's legacy.

Satoko Yokohama's debut stars the misfit of the year: an 16-year-old girl nicknamed Gorilla Man grappling with an unsympathetic boss, a singing contest and her dying father.

Francis Pasion's debut feature, sparked by a real-life murder, combines a lacerating satire of the ethics of reality TV with a cautionary account of the marketability of images of third world poverty.

Wise and deliciously witty, Ryosuke Hashiguchi's film chronicles eight years of a marriage: a husband becomes a courtroom artist while his wife nearly has a breakdown.

Two friends from the countryside set off to the big city with an injured cow for company in this Iranian road movie.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's great new film is what the Japanese call a home drama, revealing everything that unites and divides one particular family in one 24-hour time-frame without a shred of melodrama or sentimentality.

Philippe Grandrieux presents a haunting new work, a snowbound landscape drama set in a world of stillness and near-silence.

A brother and sister build a house in a remote section of the Danube in this superbly photographed tale of incestuous passions.

Set in the aftermath of 2004's tsunami on Thailand's south coast: an architect from Bangkok has an affair with a hotel manager and offends the still-grieving locals.