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Faced with a daunting array of films with activist agendas, we've selected five quite different American documentaries with the breadth of vision to transcend simple polemics. Better This World and If a Tree Falls are both deeply thoughtful films about activism, the effectiveness of protest and the culture of violence escalated by the 'war on terror'. We selected the most overtly educational of these films, Hot Coffee, because it was the most effective at counteracting popular prejudice and making alarming sense about alarming things we did not already know.

Films for our youngest audience, bound also to entertain their more seasoned companions, are presented in association with Square Eyes Children's Film Foundation.

As always documentary filmmakers furnish the Festival with a wealth of insight, experience - and artfulness.

The passage of time is surely the true third dimension in cinema (with depth-of-field coming in fifth after sound). Pace probably determines our experience of a film as crucially as the pictures that move within that rectangular frame. While every trailer asserts that racy is best, a growing number of cinephiles appreciate the uses of slowness and the pleasures to be savoured in venturing into worlds that take their own sweet time to unfold.

Not every filmmaker needs to throw you aboard an express train to take you where they'd like you to be. There's art in the reticence of Ceylan or the truculent grind of Bela Tarr, and it's not doing anyone else down to call these films pure cinema. We invite you to pause and take a seat on the slow train.

Say hello to mayhem. Films in this section have been selected to arouse, terrify and outrage by Ant Timpson, founder of the legendary Incredibly Strange Film Festival.

These movies about media pose the same question: whose story is it?

We highlight first- and second-time feature directors whose work caught our eye. Remember their names. (Our record for backing trail-blazers is none too shabby.) Women directors are surging ahead on this year's programme. We know we're not alone in hoping that this is indeed a sign of things to come. As always this section is replete with fresh Kiwi talent, containing as it does our annual Homegrown programmes of New Zealand short films, selected for the Festival by our friends at MIC Te Rerehiko.

Considering the massive popularity of broadcast live sport it's surprising how few terrific feature documentaries we see about sports. This year there were enough to make up this punchy sports section.

We present our pick of the features the Festival's programmers have encountered in a year of intense moving watching. Some were submitted to us, others we found at Festivals elsewhere in the world, and yet more were drawn to our attention by far-flung informants. While always alert to that X factor loosely known as Quality, we're also keen to field a wide array of genres and styles. Award-winners from the world's major Festivals jostle here with the films that have made the most impact on their own home ground.