Australia

Diversity is the word this year in our annual collage of animated gems – films that dare you to reach out and run your hands over the textures of paint and pencil.

John Hughes’ fascinating documentary about dissent in Cold War era Australia offers a timely commentary on the challenges facing oppositional voices in dark times.

This fascinating “making of” the wonderful Ten Canoes, is quite unlike any other you’ve seen as balanda filmmaker Rolf de Heer learns the traditions of aboriginal storytelling on the job.

This year’s Digital Space programme stretches its wings to take a broader view than ever of the continually evolving world of digital animation.

Love, whether it is romantic, catastrophic or familial, is fertile ground for storytelling, as these emerging local short filmmakers have all discovered.

Ray Lawrence’s follow-up to Lantana is a powerful psychological drama that envelops four men and their families after they discover a murdered woman’s body on a fishing trip.

Australia’s tautest, most cunningly scripted psychological thriller since The Interview unfolds over the course of one hot summer night on the midnight train to Freemantle, Perth.

Geoff Burton’s graceful documentary examines the treatment of a student’s life-threatening brain disease shortly upon arriving in Australia, and the quiet stoicism of his wife, a devout young Bangladeshi woman.

Covet not the senior tribesman’s wife. Most perfectly realised of the many films Dutch expat Rolf de Heer has made in Australia, this time with Aboriginal story-tellers in the Northern Territory. Special Jury Prize Cannes.