A gripping thriller set in World War Two Holland and a hilarious offbeat romantic comedy from New Zealand have been selected to open and close the 2007 Bermuda International Film Festival, March 16-24.

'Black Book', by veteran director Paul Verhoeven ('Basic Instinct', 'Total Recall', 'RoboCop') will open the festival, while 'Eagle vs. Shark', the first film by Kiwi stand-up comedian Taika Waititi, will close the event.

'Black Book' will screen at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 16 at Southside Cinema, while 'Eagle vs. Shark' will screen at 6.30 p.m. on Saturday, March 24 at Liberty Theatre.

Festival organisers also announced the films screening in the Special Presentation and Midnight Madness categories.

Descriptions of the films follow:

[box] 'Black Book' (d. Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands-Germany-United Kingdom-Belgium, 135 minutes, subtitled)

In the late summer of 1944, pretty Jewish chanteuse Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) is waiting out the war, separated from her family and a moment away from being caught by the Gestapo. She joins the Resistance, and infiltrates the German security service. Her mission soon finds her charming a high-ranking official (Sebastian Koch) and, without any warning, she is swept into a spider's web of intrigue, treachery and betrayal that even sheds light on the ambush that wiped out her family.

[box] 'Film Eagle vs. Shark' (d. Taika Waititi, New Zealand, 87 minutes)

This hilarious, wickedly offbeat love story is about a funny, fractured romance between two misfits, woven into an all-consuming quest for revenge, and shot through with the strange, sweet hilarity of the human condition. It all begins with the hopeless romantic Lily (Loren Horsley), a lonely oddball and fast-food waitress, who is in love with Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), another lonely oddball. He works as a video game clerk, but has spent the last decade plotting revenge on a bully from his high school past. When Lily and Jarrod connect at a "dress as your favourite animal" party, she's an anaemic shark and he's a fluffy-headed eagle. After a brief fling, Jarrod dumps Lily because he's too busy "training" for his all-important payback mission. As Jarrod's day of reckoning arrives, and everything hits the fan, Jarrod and Lily will find something that goes beyond romantic fantasies and revenge — faith in who they are.SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS[box] 'The Killer Within' (d. Macky Alston, United States, 85 minutes) Bob Bechtel is a mild-mannered chap with a wife and two daughters who teaches psychology at the University of Arizona. For 50 years he has kept a big secret: he is a killer. In 1955, while at Swarthmore College, he went on a shooting rampage and took the life of fellow student, Holmes Strozier. Although not convicted of murder, he was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. After five years he was released, and half a century later Bob decided to tell family, friends and colleagues of this disturbing chapter in his life. And, disturbing it is. Bob claims that intense bullying led him to that bizarre point. Strozier's brother, John, disputes the harassment. Filmmaker Alston neatly captures the weird compassion in the situation: the stepdaughter perplexed by her mother who married him knowing his history; the daughter who knows she is on this earth only because Bob was given a second chance; and, the wife who loves him but acknowledges that part of him is scary at times.

[box] >Paris je t'aime' (d. Tom Tykwer and Others, France, 116 minutes, subtitles)

Tristan Carné wanted to make a feature composed of short films by different directors from around the world, each celebrating a different one of Paris's 20 arrondissements (neighbourhoods). Tom Tykwer's 'True', starring Natalie Portman and Melchior Beslon, set in the 10th arrondissement, was filmed first and served as a model for future directors. The next directors to sign on were the Coen brothers. With the Tykwer and Coen brothers films as examples, many of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers readily agreed to take part. Each director was asked to tell the story of a romantic encounter in Paris in under five minutes, on a tight budget and a two- to three-day shooting schedule. The film's crazy-quilt collection of cinematic images and stories show us a city that is diverse, unexpected, and in constant movement.

[box] 'A Sunday in Kigali' (d. Robert Favreau, Canada, 118 minutes, subtitles)

This powerful film tells a remarkable story of love, loss and regret set against the background of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian journalist living in Rwanda to make a film about the spread and treatment of AIDS in the country. At a poolside bar he meets Gentille, a young Rwandan woman working there. At first a relationship between them seems impossible, but they are inexorably drawn together. Contrasted against their growing love for each other are the worrying signs that the country around them is moving towards civil war, a war whose climax would leave so many people dead.

[boxB>'Everything's Cool' (d. Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold, United States, 2007)

In this "toxic comedy" the filmmakers who made 'Blue Vinyl' — which won Best Documentary at BIFF 2002 — weave an entertaining, though distressing, tale about the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action — global warming. On one side are the activists and scientists struggling to rouse an indifferent public and unimpressed government to take action. On the other side are the lobbyists working tirelessly to dismiss the issue as the hysterical speculation of a fanatical few. Helfand and Gold follow a cadre of messengers who are passionate and exasperated about the urgent need for change. There is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who keeps trying to retire from the fight; a Weather Channel expert climatologist who has the excruciating task of reducing her PhD to primetime sound bites; a public servant who blows the lid off the White House's manipulation of key climate-change research; and, two "bad boys" aiming a radical critique at the environmental movement. The disinterest of the public is palpable and the calculated dismissal of the issue by naysayers is obscene. Everything's not cool and the sooner we actively pursue solutions the better.MIDNIGHT MADNESS

[box] 'Shortbus' (d. John Cameron Mitchell, United States, 102 minutes) The film explores the lives of several characters living in New York between the September 11 terrorist attacks and the great blackout of summer 2003. That period of time saw New Yorkers shaken from their often cynical, anonymous existence. The result, says the filmmaker, was a sincere reconnection with the world. The story focuses primarily on two couples, one straight and one gay, and how their lives intersect with a variety of semi-lost souls. Male and female, straight and gay, the characters find one another — and eventually find themselves — when they all converge at a weekly underground salon called 'Shortbus', a mad nexus of art, music, politics, and polysexual carnality. The film is packed with graphic sex, which is used as a plot device to move the narrative along and to reveal the intentions and fears of the multiple characters portrayed. [box] 'Taxidermia' (d. Gyorgy Palfi, Hungary, 92 minutes) Three stories. Three ages. Three men. A grandfather, a father, a son, linked together by recurring motifs. The dim grandfather, an orderly during World War Two, lives in his bizarre fantasies; he desires love. The huge father seeks success as a top athlete — a speedeater — in the postwar Soviet era. The grandson, a meek, small-boned taxidermist, yearns for something greater: immortality. He wants to create the most perfect work of art of all time by stuffing his own torso. Historical facts and surrealism become intertwined as magical realism, like in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the works of the popular contemporary Hungarian writer, Parti Nagy Lajos; the script is based on two of the latter's stories. The filmmaker added the third, that of the grandson, the taxidermist. The film is a goulash of bodily fluids and perversity — its unrestrained, anarchic visual imagination and grotesque poetry leave one in disbelief.

Tickets to BIFF 2007 will go on sale March 5 at 10 a.m. both online at www.biff.bm as well as at the festival's physical box office at # 6 Passenger Terminal, Front Street, Hamilton.