The World Cinema Showcase narrative features line-up:

KIM Ki-duk?s work is featured at the festival for the second consecutive year. His latest film, 3-Iron, is a radical departure in style from ?Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter?and Spring?, which was received so enthusiastically last year. ?3-Iron? is about a man who drifts around on his motorcycle looking for empty houses to stay in. One day, he breaks into the house of a married woman, former model Sun-hwa (LEE Seung-yeon), who has been tormented by her abusive husband. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa go on the lam after Tae-suk grabs her husbands? 3-iron, which golfers will know is the least used club, and hits golf balls at him.

?Bad Education? is about a a successful young film director in search of his next movie. He receives a plot to die for when Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael Garc?a Bernal) delivers a short story called The Visit, drawing on his school experiences. Turns out the men have a shared history, a past which Bad Education unspools in a compelling and compassionate manner.

Forty-year-old Cahit (Birol Unel) is brought to a German psychiatric clinic after attempting suicide and sets out to start a new life, even as he longs for drugs and alcohol to numb his pain. Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) is young, pretty and, like Cahit, Turkish-German. She lives a lifestyle that is a bit too wild for her devout, conservative Muslim family and fakes a suicide attempt to try and escape them. But the incident brings shame upon her family, who insist that only marriage can save her. Sibel begs Cahit to marry her and he reluctantly agrees, perhaps in an effort to save her and to find meaning in his own life.

This Gallic comedy-drama was the winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. It tells the tale of a monstrously egotistical writer (co-scripter Jean-Pierre Bacri) and the overweight daughter who craves his approval but would settle for his attention.

This is a tour de force by a master of African cinema, a beautifully observed and wonderfully acted film about the tug between traditionalism and modernity in an African village. Female genital mutilation is practised in 38 of 54 member states in the African Union. The filmmaker has dedicated the film to the women who struggle to abolish this legacy of bygone days. The film revolves aroundColl? Ardo Gallo Sy (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a woman of independent opinions and strong will. Four little girls seek her protection after running away from the circumcision ceremony. They know that, haunted by the horrors of her own rites, she refused to let her third daughter undergo the ritual. A battle ensues in the village, between the men and women who seek to uphold its traditional values, and free thinkers like Coll?, who declares , creating a legal asylum zone in her compound in order to protect the girls. The standoff with the village pits female against male, progress against tradition.

This film is set in the early post-Second World War years, ?The Chorus? tells the story of a boarding school for the bullies, clowns and orphans left behind in a world that is moving on. Headmaster, Rachin, is a strict disciplinarian with little empathy for or understanding of his pupils (or teachers, for that matter). Into this bleak world comes the scruffy teacher and sometime composer, Clement Mathieu. Enduring and seeing past the unruly behaviour to children who seek encouragement and a purpose in life, he discovers several talented singers and forms a boys? choir.

@EDITRULE:

Tickets March 2 online only, at www.biff.bm. Individual film tickets are $10. Tickets will also be on sale at the BIFF Front Room box office, # 1 Passenger Terminal, Front Street, Hamilton starting Saturday March 5. The box office will be open March 5-23, Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. All six films are subtitled.