Des­pite the shock­ing and inex­plic­able decision to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robin­son in Ruins from this year’s Film Fest­iv­al (a dis­aster applic­able only to me I think) the actu­al line-up is as good as every­one says. At least I think it is from sur­vey­ing about 20 out of the 160+ titles in the pro­gramme – hardly a rep­res­ent­at­ive sample but when most of those 20 bring such joy and only a few land with a dull thud you have to think that the rest of the pro­gramme is sim­il­arly pro­por­tioned.

Last year the big Cannes win­ner, Of Gods and Men, was missed by the Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al, a situ­ation that was remedied at Easter’s World Cinema Show­case. This year, of the big Cannes movies, only Godard’s Film Social­isme is miss­ing in action. The great Swiss icon­o­clast may well have pro­duced his most inter­est­ing work in years but it will take a trip to Amazon to find out for sure. Even the redoubt­able Aro Video are unlikely to take a punt on it without the Festival’s imprim­at­ur.

As usu­al, I asked the help­ful Fest­iv­al people to point me towards the less likely, the unher­al­ded, the little bat­tle­rs, the kind of film that is eas­ily missed when skim­ming the 80 page pro­gramme. Any fool can tell you that The Tree of Life is going to be inter­est­ing. Cap­it­al Times read­ers want more than that.

Firstly music: two doc­u­ment­ar­ies impressed me and they worked so well togeth­er I wish they were a double-fea­ture. Merle Hag­gard: Learn­ing to Live With Myself is a bio­graphy of the out­law coun­try star as he settles in to an uncom­fort­able old age. Actu­ally old age to Hag­gard is no less com­fort­able than every oth­er age – I can’t think of a great star less at ease in his own skin.

Com­pare that with Sing Your Song, the life story of the pop star, act­or and act­iv­ist Harry Bela­fonte. From a sim­il­ar gen­er­a­tion to Hag­gard, born with an equal lack of oppor­tun­ity, Bela­fonte turned his tal­ent and fame into a relent­less drive to improve the lives of the people around him while Hag­gard seems to think that he is unworthy of his.

As an example of their dif­fer­ing atti­tudes to life and fame, Hag­gard described his invit­a­tion to per­form at Nixon’s White House as the proudest day of his life. Bela­fonte once refused an invit­a­tion to rep­res­ent the US at Nel­son Mandela’s inagur­a­tion in protest at the situ­ation in Haiti.

Those two films are about musi­cians but not much about music. This is remedied by crazy John Turturro’s por­trait of Napoli, Pas­sione. I think it was Noel Cow­ard who wrote of the “potency of cheap pop music”, a potency that is increased dra­mat­ic­ally when sung in a for­eign lan­guage. Filled with music video recre­ations of Neapol­it­an hits, old and new, Pas­sione is a delight from start to fin­ish.

The best doc­u­ment­ary I saw in this pre­view peri­od was Aaron Schock’s Circo, a sad look at the dwind­ling for­tunes of a once proud Mex­ic­an cir­cus, held togeth­er by ring­mas­ter “Tino” as the rest of his fam­ily slowly drifts away. A beau­ti­ful soundtrack by Calex­ico com­pletes the pic­ture. Anoth­er, more suc­ces­ful, side of the show­biz dream can be found in Being Elmo: a Bal­timore teen­ager watch­ing early morn­ing kids TV falls in love with pup­petry and dis­cov­ers a tal­ent that takes him all the way to Ses­ame Street. Joy­ous.

Every Fest­iv­al needs a great archi­tec­ture doco (last year’s I.M. Pei film, Learn­ing From Light wasn’t quite it) and this year we have How Much Does Your Build­ing Weigh, Mr Foster? Over the last 30 years Sir Nor­man Foster has built the biggest archi­tec­ture prac­tise in the world, work­ing on the biggest pro­jects and build­ing the biggest build­ings. Cinema and archi­tec­ture can work so well togeth­er, the cam­era float­ing through a space, catch­ing the inter­play of light and shad­ow, pres­ence and absence. This film does all of that, tells an great story and illu­min­ates Foster’s now influ­en­tial way of think­ing.

Soph­ie Fiennes (sis­ter of Ral­ph and Joseph) has pro­duced a doc­u­ment­ary about Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer that belongs in the “Slow Cinema” sec­tion of the pro­gramme – Over Your Cit­ies Grass Will Grow and is all the bet­ter for it. Know­ing noth­ing about Kiefer at the begin­ning, I was drawn into his work first by Fiennes’ long del­ic­ate track­ing shots and Ligeti soundtrack. Then we get to see the man at work and he turns out to have a much light­er touch in the stu­dio than his dark and broody med­it­a­tions on European his­tory would have you believe. More films show­ing artists at work please – much more cine­mat­ic than star­ing at paint­ings.

The Mill and the Cross is an exceed­ingly cine­mat­ic way to look at a paint­ing: a recre­ation of the world that pro­duced Peter Bruegel’s mid-16th cen­tury mas­ter­piece The Way to Cal­vary (and an extraordin­ary, digit­ally-sup­por­ted live-action recre­ation of the paint­ing itself). A stun­ning tech­nic­al achieve­ment but in des­per­ate need of a sense of humour.

This fest­iv­al seems to be full of con­fused teen­age girls: in Tom­boy a ten-year-old girl would rather be a boy so … chooses to be one. A del­ic­ate sub­ject deftly handled by dir­ect­or Céline Sciamma, it could have gone very wrong. She Mon­keys, from Sweden, isn’t nearly as suc­cess­ful. A seem­ingly self-con­tained four­teen-year-old (this time) tries out for the loc­al eques­tri­an vault­ing team (like syn­chron­ised swim­ming on horse­back) and falls under the spell of beau­ti­ful Cas­sandra. Or does she? Mis­tak­ing opaque char­ac­ter motiv­a­tions for a gen­er­al sense of adoles­cent mys­tery is but one of its flaws and it’s described on its own web­site as a mod­ern West­ern. Yeah, nah.

Anoth­er teen­ager, strug­gling to come to terms with adult­hood and, more spe­cific­ally, sexu­al­ity is stun­ning new­comer Clara Augarde in Love Like Pois­on. Like all of the last three films, par­ent­ing (lack of) is the core of the prob­lem but this film states its mani­festo right there in the title. Augarde reminds me of a young Isa­belle Hup­pert and that’s quite a career to aspire to.

Talk­ing of going places, Lena Dun­ham has well and truly announced her­self with Tiny Fur­niture, a film that made me laugh out loud more than almost all of the com­mer­cial Hol­ly­wood “com­ed­ies” I’ve sat though this year. And then she whoops you in the guts with some real emo­tion, too.

Talk­ing of comer­cial cinema, there are a plenty of examples of inter­na­tion­al hits to choose from: Point Blank is a French thrill­er about a hos­pit­al nurses’ aid who is dragged into a police con­spir­acy and has to join forces with a bru­tal (and tactit­urn) safe crack­er in order to res­cue his kid­napped wife. It’s a rare thing – a film with action sequences you can actu­ally fol­low – so expect a less coher­ent Hol­ly­wood remake soon.

Brazil’s biggest hit in years was Elite Squad: The Enemy With­in , the sequel to it’s pre­vi­ouys biggest hit Elite Squad. Fea­tur­ing even more police cor­rup­tion, this time plucked from the Rio head­lines, Elite Squad has plenty of action but not much sub­tlety – dir­ect­or José Padilha has def­in­itely seen the final third of Scar­face, you can be cer­tain of that.

Medi­an­er­as is a slight Argen­tini­an romantic com­edy that was in love with its eleg­ant struc­ture more than it’s char­ac­ters – two lonely-hearts take a year (and an entire film) to dis­cov­er that their soul­mate is actu­ally right across the hall. By about half way I wanted to give them both a good slap.

For once, the Sports sec­tion of the pro­gramme isn’t dom­in­ated by cyc­ling. In fact there’s even a couple of films about the sports that we watch rather than par­ti­cip­ate in. With Senna, Asif Kapa­dia provides an object les­son in doc­u­ment­ary storytelling. Most of us know the arc of Brazili­an legend Ayr­ton Senna’s life but Kapa­dia still man­ages to pro­duce sur­prise after sur­prise: grip­ping from begin­ning to end.

Fire in Babylon has less to work with in terms of archive foot­age but it sup­ple­ments it with a splen­did choice (and use) of still pho­to­graphs illus­trat­ing the 1970s bloom of West Indi­an crick­et and their 20 year suprem­acy. The thes­is is that the explo­sion of pride in Carib­bean crick­et was a res­ult of post-colo­ni­al inde­pend­ence and the case is well made. There are many pleas­ures for a crick­et fan, not least see­ing the Mas­ter Blaster, Vivi­an Richards, still quietly dom­in­at­ing every room he is in. What a play­er, what a man.

Two years ago in these pages, I recom­men­ded a Korean film called Day­time Drink­ing only to be scol­ded for it by my own moth­er. So, I wouldn’t dream of sug­gest­ing the dead­pan Mon­go­li­an “com­edy” Winter Vaca­tion which will drive many audi­ences mad with frus­tra­tion but intrigued and delighted me.

Finally, the first half of A Use­ful Life might have been made for me and me alone. A fail­ing Mon­tevid­eo cine­matheque (ima­gine if the Film Soci­ety ran its own cinema – it would be a bit like this) struggles to pay the rent and keep the pro­ject­ors run­ning des­pite fall­ing mem­ber­ship. Portly Jorge (Jorge Jel­linek) has been keep­ing the place going for 25 years but when he finally has to ven­ture out in to the world his eyes are opened but sadly mine were closed. I’ll cher­ish the beau­ti­fully observed and pho­to­graphed first half though.

A short­er ver­sion of this pre­view was prin­ted in Wel­ling­ton’s Cap­it­al Times on Wed­nes­day 27 July, 2011. This ver­sion cross-pos­ted from Funer­als & Snakes.

Feel free to add your own recom­mend­a­tions in the com­ments. There’s a lot to see!