Crossing Continents

For a fully immersive experience at the festival, how about trying our world tour?

Your tour starts on Friday with The Wonders, a delightful Italian film where the routine of a rural family is disrupted by two intruders. Fly west in the afternoon, to Brazil for The Second Mother, concerning the tensions faced by a housekeeper as her family interacts with that of her employers.

East again to France for Polisse, a gripping police procedural and your day is complete with Life in a Fishbowl, an Icelandic film about the inter-connected tales of 3 people as the banking crash looms.

Saturday starts in India with the lunchtime showing of Court, a drama that highlights the absurdities of the judicial system. A choice in the afternoon. Whether to go to Scotland, for the documentary The Closer We Get, described as 'an astonishing story of broken dreams, loyalty and perhaps redemption' from the Memory strand  or to Japan for Still the Water, a coming of age drama on a subtropical island. Stay in the far east in the evening for The Assassin, a visually stunning martial arts drama set in China and then as a seasoned traveller, you will have built up your endurance for one last film. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night from Iran is our late night frightener.

Sunday morning. Stay in Iran for the first leg of a Tom Allen double bill - Karun, charts his journey along that river and the cultural and physical challenges he faces. That's followed by The Last Explorers on the Rio Santa Cruz, his trip along a river under threat from dambuilding in Patagonia. You can swap travellers' tales with Tom after the film at his Q&A.

After Dukhtar from Pakistan there will be just time to catch The Wolfpack, the amazing New York story of 7 siblings hidden from society and who know the world outside only through film. And what better way to finish, than seeing patron Sir John Hurt in AKA Nadia from Israel, where a woman’s hidden past come back to haunt her?

3 days, 13 countries, 14 films, zero carbon footprint, what better way to travel?