Although it may not be the UK's oldest screen event, the London Film Festival remains the best. However, it's sad to see how truncated the 61st edition is, as it only runs for 12 days between 4-15 October at various venues across the capital. This is not intended in any way as a criticism, as myriad factors have contributed to the decline of film festivals and seasons in this country. But, in its pomp, LFF lasted closer to three weeks and, while we should be grateful that the BFI is still able to host such a feast of global cinema, it's very much a sign of our times that such a proud bastion appears so diminished.

There's still much to savour, however, with a welcome dash of old-style Hollywood glamour being provided by Paul McGuigan's Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which (at long last) brings to the screen Peter Turner's deeply moving memoir of the last days of noir icon Gloria Grahame. The BFI is curating a season of Grahame's finest films this autumn, but her private life was often much more colourful than the moody postwar monochrome pictures she illuminated. The final chapter proved the most poignant, however, as the dying Grahame (Annette Bening) collapses in a Lancaster hotel and finds sanctuary in the home of the mother (Julie Walters) of her former lover, Liverpudlian actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell).

Grahame co-starred with Joan Crawford in David Butler's Sudden Fear (1952) and there's a chance to see the James M. Cain melodrama that earned Crawford her only Oscar and put her back at the top of the A list, as Michael Curtiz's simmering mother-daughter saga, Mildred Pierce (1945), leads another choice selection of Treasures From the Archive. Perhaps the pick of the titles on display is the restored print of Lois Weber's The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), a lavish silent adaptation of Daniel Auber's opera that was not only the first American epic to be directed by a woman, but was also the sole feature to star the legendary Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova. Then the most expensive production in Universal's history, the story is set in Bourbon Naples and centres on the uprising sparked when fiery peasant Masaniello (Rupert Julian) leads an uprising against the detested Spanish when nobleman Alphonso (Douglas Gerrard) seduces his mute sister, Fenella (Pavlova).

Every bit as technically inventive as the early features of DW Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, this glorious rediscovery is joined on the Treasures slate by Alexandre Volkoff's The Prince of Adventurers (1927), which stars Ivan Mozzhukhin as Casanova; Robert Land's expose of the seamier side of Vienna, Little Veronika (Innocence) (1929); Howard Hawks's rattling gangster gem, Scarface (1932); Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's timeless fantasy, A Matter of Life and Death (1946); Henri-Georges Clouzot's Brigitte Bardot-starring courtroom classic, La Vérité (1960); Bryan Forbes's offbeat snapshot of pre-Swinging London, The L-Shaped Room (1962); Humberto Solas's masterly tripartite history of Cuba, Lucia (1968); Toshio Matsumoto's cult countercultural take on the Oedipal myth, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969); Med Hondo's wry account of a Mauritanian's experiences in Paris, O Soleil (1970); Dario Argento's girls' school giallo chiller, Suspiria (1977); John Badham's Bee Gees-scored disco gem, Saturday Night Fever; Terry Gilliam's gleefully inventive Lewis Carroll adaptation, Jabberwocky (all 1977); and Kamal Swaroop's underground study of small-town eccentricity, Om Dar-B-Dar (1988).

In its previous six decades, LFF has always been a perceptive showcase for British pictures and the 2017 selection gives equal weight to prestige productions and indie discoveries. Three strong contributions from women directors particularly catch the eye, with Sally Potter assembling a fine ensemble cast for The Party, a Buñuelian satire that chronicles the fallout when new Shadow Health Minister Kristin Scott Thomas and husband Timothy Spall invite waspish old friend Patricia Clarkson, drug-fuelled banker Cillian Murphy, new-age poseur Bruno Ganz and lesbian adviser Cherry Jones and her partner Emily Mortimer to a supposedly civilised soirée. Clio Barnard turns to Rose Tremain for inspiration as her bestselling novel, The Trespass, becomes Dark River, as estranged siblings Mark Stanley and Ruth Wilson clash over farmer father Sean Bean's legacy. And there's more literary rebooting in Spite Your Face, as Rachel Maclean re-imagines the Pinocchio story as a scabrous neo-liberal parable in which the 29 year-old artist plays all the roles herself (with the help of a versatile vocal cast) in charting the rise and fall of a street urchin in a callously consumerist society. Flitting between narrative, collage and political tract, Benedict Seymour also revisits a classic in reworking Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) as Dead the Ends, which blends classic sci-fi tropes with emojis and gifs to follow a time-travellers journey in the run up to the 2011 London riots. Another familiar story is given a fresh spin in Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's Loving Vincent, which has been billed as `the world's first fully painted feature film' and uses around 65,000 frames produced by some 120 artists to revisit the final days of Vincent Van Gogh in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise and suggest that the tragic Dutch artist might well have been murdered.

Saul Dibb presents a more traditional period piece, as he revives RC Sheriff's celebrated play, Journey's End. Previously filmed in 1930 by James Whale, this claustrophobic rendition started out with Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne being tipped to star. But the tale of the task facing Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin) to restore the morale of a trench unit comprising Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), Osborne (Paul Bettany), Hibbert (Tom Sturridge), Mason (Toby Jones) and Trotter (Stephen Graham) still makes a worthy contribution to the Great War centenary commemorations. A conflict of another kind is examined in Roland Joffé's The Forgiven, which recreates the encounter at the 1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa between Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker) and Piet Blomfeld (Eric Bana), who is serving a life term for murder in Cape Town's Pollsmoor Prison.

Africa also provides the backdrop for part of the plot, as actor Andy Serkis selects a biopic for his William Nicholson-scripted directorial debut, Breathe. Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy star as Robin and Diana Cavendish, whose 1950s stint in the Kenyan tea business is cut short when he contracts polio and she turns to twin brothers Bloggs and David (both Tom Hollander) and Oxford academic and part-time inventor Teddy Hall (Hugh Bonneville) to help her husband survive. The same period informs theatre director Dominic Cooke's Ian McEwan adaptation, On Chesil Beach, as violinist Saoirse Ronan and historian Billy Howle struggle to connect on their Dorset honeymoon and discover that their emotional impasse owes much to their respective mothers, Violet (Emily Watson) and Marjorie (Anne-Marie Duff).

The scene shifts into the 1970s, as Maxine Peake overcomes the objections of her brutish husband to try her hand at stand-up comedy on the sexist northern club circuit in Adrian Shergold's Funny Cow, which also stars Paddy Considine, who doubles up as writer-director on Journeyman, which examines the impact of a serious head injury on a middleweight boxing champion and his long-suffering wife, Jodie Whittaker. Another actor heads behind the camera, as Jamie Thraves calls the shots on Pickups, which explores how Irish actor Aidan Gillen struggles to juggle the emotional fallout from a wounding divorce, the need to rebuild his relationship with his teenage son and a new role as a serial killer.

Coping is also the theme of Tupaq Felber's first feature, Tides, as thirtysomethings Simon Meacock, Jamie Zubairi and Robyn Isaac try to fathom what is eating buddy Jon Foster during a narrowboat holiday. A doleful air also pervades Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete, an adaptation of Willy Vlautin's acclaimed novel, which sees homeless teenager Charlie Plummer forge a relationship with washed-up horse trainer Steve Buscemi before heading off across the bleak beauty of the American north-west in search of a fondly remembered aunt. Four-legged friends are also to the fore in Andrew Kötting's Lek and the Dogs, a avant-garde revision of playwright Hattie Naylor's account four year-old Ivan Mishukov's feral childhood that uses archive footage and genre tropes to relocate outsider Xavier Tchili's story to the deserts of Northern Chile.

Another true story inspires Naeem Mohaiemen's Tripoli Cancelled, a rumination on the ongoing migrant crisis that stars Vassilis Koukalani in a recreation of the director's father's week-long 1977 ordeal of being trapped inside Greece's Ellinikon Airport without a passport. Incarceration of a less civilised sort is scrutinised by French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire in A Prayer Before Dying, which stars Joe Cole in an adaptation of Scouser Billy Moore's hard-hitting memoir of spending three years for drug dealing in Thailand's notorious Klong Prem prison, where he not only forges a friendship with transgender murderer Pornchanok Mabklang, but also develops into a champion Muay Thai boxer.

Nine year-old orphan Margaret Mulubwa also finds herself in captivity after she upsets some conservative villagers and is sent to a Zambian witch camp in Welsh debutant Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch, which employs a provocatively elliptical narrative style to explore the superstition, ignorance, prejudice and corruption that hinders progress in so many African countries. Another outside ruffles feathers in Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer after wealthy cardiothoracic surgeon Colin Farrell befriends fatherless teenager Barry Keoghan, only for him to destroy his benefactors cosy home with his ophthalmologist wife. Nicole Kidman.

Domestic strife also drives the action in Dan Kokotajlo's Apostasy, an insider account of the ramifications of 18 year-old Mancunian Jehovah's Witness Molly Wright and her mother Siobhan Finneran being forced to choose between their faith and family when sister/daughter Sacha Parkinson is found guilty of fornication and excommunicated by the church elders. The prejudices of a tight-knit community resurface in TV director Michael Pearce's debut feature, Beast, as a spate of murders on the island of Jersey threatens bus guide Jessie Buckley's romance with poacher Johnny Flynn, who is viewed with mounting suspicion by her controlling mother Geraldine James, smug siblings Shannon Tarbet and Oliver Maltman, and lovesick cop, Trystan Gravelle.

Wrapping up the UK contingent, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman transfer their hit Ghost Stories from the stage to the screen, as Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse and Andy Lawther form part of the ensemble as Nyman's sceptical professor finds a file containing details of three unsolved paranormal cases involving a nightwatchman, a teenage driver and an expectant father. The horror continues on the other side of the Irish Sea, as some rehabilitated revenants try to control their appetites in the face of dread and discrimination in David Freyne's debut, The Cured, a Romeroesque saga set six years after a viral outbreak that claimed the life of Ellen Page's husband and survivor Sam Keeley's brother. Bipolar drummer Dermot Murphy and 17 year-old Asperger's sufferer Jacob McCarthy forge an equally unlikely friendship in Nick Kelly's first feature, The Drummer and the Keeper, after Murphy's doctor suggests that the indie musician might benefit from playing a little Sunday morning football.

Ex-rugby league player Matt Nable makes an impressive start as both actor and screenwriter in Australian first-timer Stephen McCallum's 1%, as the vicious bisexual leader of the Copperheads motorcycle gang who emerges from prison to oppose deputy Ryan Corr's bid to save his kid brother by co-operating with the rival gang from which Josh McConville stole a consignment of heroin. The mood is even more menacing in Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country, which harks back to the Northern Territory in 1929 as cattle-herder Hamilton Morris and wife Natassia Gorey-Furber settle on bigot Ewen Leslie's ranch. Despite the efforts of religious foreman Sam Neill, Leslie picks on the newcomer who defends himself during a drunken fracas and is forced to head into the MacDonnell Ranges outside Alice Springs with cop Bryan Brown and Aboriginal tracker Gibson John on his tail. Crossing to New Zealand, Samoan Uelese Petaia takes a different approach to dealing with his violent past in Tusi Tamasese's One Thousand Ropes, as the baker-cum-midwife seeks help from the spirit world to find an alternative way to deal with the boyfriend who has been beating his pregnant daughter, (Frankie Adams. Confrontation is also central to the action in Fijian-British director Toa Fraser's 6 Days, a reconstruction of the Iranian Embassy siege in Princes Gate in London in 1980, which stars Mark Strong as Chief Inspector Max Vernon, Jamie Bell as SAS team leader Rusty Firmin and Abbie Cornish as BBC reporter Kate Adie. However, a very different side to the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism is presented by Nora Twomey in The Breadwinner, an animation executive produced by Angelina Jolie that tells the story of a nine year-old Afghan girl's efforts to disguise herself as a boy in order to find a job to support her family after her father is abducted by the Taliban.

Leading a strong American contingent are two pictures that have been tipped for big things during the award season. Recalling the 1973 tennis challenge between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Battle of the Sexes balances the opportunism of the hustling chauvinist (Steve Carrel) with the struggles King (Emma Stone) faced for equality in sport and acceptance as a lesbian. With a script by Simon Beaufoy and supporting turns by Sarah Silverman as World Tennis magazine founder Gladys Heldman, Andrea Riseborough as King's lover, Marilyn Barnett, and Elisabeth Shue as the long-suffering Priscilla Riggs, this finds a curious companion in another tale of a woman demanding to be taken seriously, Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Furious that seven months have passed since her daughter was raped, murdered and set alight, Frances McDormand uses three disused billboards to shame police chief Woody Harrelson into stepping up the investigation. But, while son Lucas Hedges and ex-husband John Hawkes try to restrain the short-fused, foul-mouthed gift shop worker, her protest brings her into conflict with violent racist cop, Sam Rockwell.

The shortcomings of America's law enforcers are further exposed in David Fincher's Mindhunter, a two-episode introduction to a forthcoming Netflix series that draws on Mark Olshaker's study of John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler, who became the first to use the term `serial killer' in the 1970s. Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany play the duo based on the special agents in the FBI Behavioural Science Unit who came to realise during a tour of the United States that the majority of cops were using outdated psychological approaches to capture crooks and killers alike. Marc Meyers ventures into similar territory in My Friend Dahmer, an adaptation of a graphic novel by John Backderf that uses bleak wit to chronicle the school days of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) and his home life with parents Lionel (Dallas Roberts) and Joyce (Anne Heche). John Cameron Mitchell puts a more playful twist on the teen experience in his knowingly kitschy Neil Gaiman adaptation, How to Talk to Girls At Parties, which sees aliens descend on Croyden during the 1977 Silver Jubilee and budding punk Alex Sharp fall for extraterrestrial Elle Fanning to the thudding music of The Dyschords, who just happen to be managed by Nicole Kidman. Another unusual romance blossoms in Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, a homage to 1950s sci-fi B movies that centres on Sally Hawkins, a cleaner at a top secret Cold War laboratory, where she surprises workmate Octavia Spencer and gay pal Richard Jenkins by forming an attachment to the aquatic creature being examined by sinister scientist Michael Shannon and his conflicted assistant, Michael Stuhlbarg.

More echoes of bygone Bs can be detected in Alexander Payne's Downsizing, a long-gestating satire that has plenty to say about Trumpist attitudes to migration, climate change and social renewal. Matt Damon stars as the everyman who convinces wife Kristen Wiig to take advantage of Norwegian technology that can shrink people to 1/12th their normal size in order to reduce their eco footprint. However, life in Leisureland, New Mexico proves trying with upstairs neighbours like wheeler-dealer Christoph Waltz, his partying pal Udo Kier and Vietnamese dissident amputee Hong Chau, who runs a cleaning business after being reduced and trafficked against her will. The Vietnam War provides the background to Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying, a ragtag road movie set in 2003 that salutes Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973) in reuniting Steve Carell and service buddies Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne in order to bury Carell's son, who has perished in the war in Iraq.

A Gulf War veteran holds sway in Lynne Ramsay's broodingly unsettling take on Jonathan Ames's novel, You Were Never Really Here, which earned Joaquin Phoenix the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his performance as an ex-FBI agent-turned-troubleshooter, who agrees to rescue Ekaterina Samsonov, the abducted teenage daughter of Senator Alex Manette, who has just been nominated as the presidential running mate of Alessandro Nivola. Scored by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, this makes for fascinating contrast with Aaron Katz's equally noirish, but far more playful Gemini, a mumblecore throwback to the crime movies of the 1940s that sees Lola Kirke juggle her duties as personal assistant to bisexual screen star Zoë Kravitz to find her gun, which was used in the murder being investigated by philosophising cop, John Cho.

A quest also dominates Todd Haynes's adaptation of Brian Selznick's Young Adult novel, Wonderstruck, which juxtaposes stories set half a century apart. In 1977, hearing-impaired Oakes Fegley sets out to track down his absentee father after the tragic death of his mother, while, in 1927, film fanatic Millicent Simmonds gives her distracted father the slip in order to meet silent siren Julianne Moore. However, the pair find themselves getting more than they bargained for when they enter the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The same city also provides the setting for Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories, which delves into the dysfunction that envelopes septuagenarian sculptor Dustin Hoffman before a blow to the head lands him in hospital and worthless siblings Adam Sandler and Elizabeth marvel, along with their flashy brother Ben Stiller and drink-sozzled stepmother Emma Thompson are forced to take stock of their lives.

An unexpected incident has equally quirky consequences for Brooklyn sisters Mary-Louise Parker and Chloë Sevigny in Alex Ross Perry's Golden Exits, as their request for the latter's archivist husband, Adam Horowitz, to attend to their late father's papers is complicated by his growing fixation on new Australian assistant Emily Browning and her crush on sound technician and distant family friend Jason Schwartzman, who is married to the sweet-natured Analeigh Tipton. Marital complications are also to the fore in Azazel Jacobs's The Lovers, as Debra Winger and Tracy Letts promise respective partners Aidan Gillen and Melora Walters that they will finally end their long-dormant relationship. However, emotions start to stir during a weekend visit from son Tyler Ross and his new girlfriend, Jessica Sula.

More New York stories overlap in Dustin Guy Defa's Person to Person, which flits between the everyday travails of record collector Bene Coopersmith on the trail of a rare Charlie Parker disc, cub reporter Abbi Jacobson on her first day with Michael Cera on a tabloid newspaper, troubled teenager Tavi Gevinson and watchmaker Philip Baker Hall. The Big Apple also features in debuting Australian Jessica M Thompson's The Light of the Moon, as architect Stephanie Beatriz endures a nightmare six weeks after she is raped after a night out. Another first-time director draws on her own experiences of surviving in the city in Most Beautiful Island, in which Ana Asensio also stars as undocumented Spanish migrant who tires of taking thankless jobs to accept the potential bumper payday offered by her Russian friend, Natasha Romanova. However, as she enters a dank basement in a black cocktail dress, Asensio begins to fear she has made a mistake.

Another debutant, Sophie Brooks, lightens the mood in the flashbacking romcom, The Boy Downstairs, as Zosia Mamet returns from a long spell in London to move into a New York brownstone, only to discover that ex-boyfriend Matthew Shear is living in the same building. Connecticut teenagers Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke are also reunited in playwright Cory Finley's first film, Thoroughbreds. Cookes mother hopes Taylor-Joy can help her daughter with her homework. But she leads her astray, as they forge a pact with drug dealer Anton Yelchin in plotting to murder Taylor-Joy's wealthy father, Paul Sparks.

Two more strong female characters face off in Stephen Cone's lesbian rite of passage, Princess Cyd, as 16 year-old Jessie Pinnick seeks time away from her depressed father in South Carolina to spend the summer with novelist aunt Rebecca Spence in Chicago. Initially, Pinnick finds the Windy City intimidating. But, then, she meets barista Malic White. However, the brush with celebrity is altogether more sinister in Matt Spicer's Ingrid Goes West, as Aubrey Plaza leaves a psychiatric ward following the death of her parents and uses her inheritance to buy her way into the good books of Instagram lifestyle blogger Elizabeth Olsen, who is terrified that the stalking newcomer is going to destroy her carefully constructed social media image.

An ominous air also pervades Saturday Night Live alumnus Dave McCary's Brigsby Bear, as Kyle Mooney escapes the desert bunker where he has been living with kidnapper parents Mark Hamill and Jane Adams and sets about recreating the children's TV programme that has been his sole source of pleasure. But he quickly discovers that he is the only person to have ever heard of Brigsby Bear and his bid to remake the show soon run into difficulties. Culture shock is also the theme of South Korean video essays Kogonada's first feature, Columbus, which reveals shades of Yasujiro Ozu and Hal Hartley as John Cho fetches up in the modernist architecture capital of America to see his ailing father and forms an unlikely bond with librarian Haley Lu Richardson, who needs to take a break from her esteem-sapping mother, Michelle Forbes.

Another paternal passing sparks the action in Damon Cardasis's mini-musical Saturday Church, as Luka Kain has to move in with mother Margot Bingham and aunt Regina Taylor in order to keep an eye on kid brother Jaylin Fletcher. But, just as Taylor declares that she is going to cure Kain of his penchant for wearing women's clothing, the fabulously attired MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore and Alexis Garcia teach him how to dress to impress local heartthrob Marquis Rodriguez. By contrast, player Harris Dickinson is much more coy about his sexuality in Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats, as spends his days flirting with girls with his mates and his nights trysting with online hook-ups or cruising for strangers near the Coney Island boardwalk.

Sioux cowboy Brady Jandreau also has to come terms with a new identity in Chloé Zhao''s South Dakota saga, The Rider, as the doctor forbids him from bronco riding after a near fatal fall and Jandreau (who co-stars in this loosely autobiographical tale with his dad Tim and sister Lilly) has to focus his talents on wrangling horse and supporting his disabled rodeo buddy, Lane Scott. Making the right decisions proves equally tricky for brothers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead in The Endless, as the actor-directors are lured back to the cult family they have only recently escaped and Benson has to curb Moorhead's enthusiasm to make things up with their former `family' after they receive a mysterious message.

Doing the right thing by a loved one also lies at the heart of S. Craig Zahler's Brawl in Cell Block 99, as washed-up boxer and failed mechanic Vince Vaughan agrees to run drugs for old acquaintance Marc Blucas. But, when a deal goes wrong, Vaughan finds himself behind bars needing to rely on strangers Don Johnson and Udo Kier if he is to save pregnant wife Jennifer Carpenter by assassinating a high-profile inmate. A botched robbery proves problematic for small-time crook Robert Pattinson in Ben and Joshua Safdie's Good Time, as emotionally vulnerable brother Ben Safdie is injured and arrested in the raid on a Queens bank and Pattinson tries to borrow money from the devoted Jennifer Jason Leigh before deciding to bust his sibling out of hospital.

Another sibling team, Ian and Eshom Nelms, view larceny and vice through a different lens in Small Town Crime, as alcoholic shamus John Hawkes promises wealthy Robert Forster that he will find out who killed his granddaughter. However, Hawkes discovers that she worked as a prostitute for Clifton Collins, Jr. and defies the urgings of adoptive sister Octavia Spencer and her husband, Anthony Anderson, to ensure that no other girls meet the same fate. Jake Gyllenhaal also resists the advice of mother Miranda Richardson in David Gordon Green's Stronger, an account of deli clerk Jeff Bauman's bid to rebuild his life after he lost both legs in an explosion while waiting for girlfriend Erin Hurley (Tatiana Maslany) to finish the 2013 Boston Marathon.

Two contrasting tales from the 1940s close the fictional part of the English-language slate. Angela Robinson unearths the remarkable story of a secret comic-book creator in Professor Marston & The Wonder Women, which not only explores how psychologist William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) pseudonymously published Wonder Woman, but also how he modelled the character on his psychologist-lawyer wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), and Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), the niece of iconic suffragette Margaret Sanger, with whom the Marstons lived in a polyamorous relationship. But the prejudice is markedly less civilised in Dee Rees's epic adaptation of Hillary Jordan's novel, Mudbound, which follows Memphis spinster Carey Mulligan after she marries Jason Clarke and relocates to his new farm on the Mississippi Delta. Obedient to her husband, while being drawn to his dashing brother, Garrett Hedlund, Mulligan shares her in-law's dismay when grandfather Jonathan Banks has a run-in with Jason Mitchell (a war hero like Hedlund), who is the son of black sharecroppers Rob Morgan and Mary J. Blige, who grow cotton on land leased from Clarke.

Moving into documentary territory, a handful of titles stand out from the crowd. Michael Caine is joined by Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Joan Collins, Lulu, Sandie Shaw, Terry O'Neill, David Bailey, David Puttnam, Twiggy, Penelope Tree and Mary Quant in reminiscing about London in the Swinging Sixties in David Batty's My Generation, which has been scripted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Marianne Faithfull also pops up, although the focus is fully upon her in Sandrine Bonnaire's Faithfull and the French actress's Vagabond director, the redoubtable Agnès Varda (who is now 89), discusses her friendship with photographer-cum-artist JR (aka Jean René) in Faces, Places.

Another actuality veteran makes a welcome return to LFF, as 87 year-old Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes of another great institution in Ex Libris: New York Public Library, which not only eavesdrops on the hushed conversations in the iconic building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, but also drops into 11 satellite branches in the Five Boroughs. Another actuality veteran makes a welcome return to LFF, as 87 year-old Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes of another great institution in Ex Libris: New York Public Library, which not only eavesdrops on the hushed conversations in the iconic building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, but also drops into 11 satellite branches in the Five Boroughs. However, the focus is less observational and more forensic in Alexandre O Philippe's 78/52, which recalls the filming of the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with the aid of Jamie Lee Curtis, Oz Perkins, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Bogdanovich, Neil Marshall, Karyn Kusama, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Stanley, Walter Murch, Elijah Wood, Danny Elfman and Leigh Whannell.

There are also plenty more famous faces on view in Eugene Jarecki's Promised Land, as a ride in Elvis Presley's car enables the director to discuss the changing American psyche with the likes of Greil Marcus, Luc Sante, Emmylou Harris, Alec Baldwin, Mike Myers, Ethan Hawke and Ashton Kutcher. The ever-questing Alex Gibney also has an eye very much on the present in harking back to the past in No Stone Unturned, as he examines the motive behind the 1994 killing by three Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen of six innocent drinkers, while they watched the Republic of Ireland playing Italy in the World Cup in a pub in Loughinisland, County Down.

Completing the line-up (in alphabetical order) are: Arshad Khan's Abu (a gay Pakistani film-maker assesses his relationship with his devout Muslim father); Lissette Orozco's Adriana's Pact (a first-time documentarist turns the camera on herself and her aunt after she discovers that Adriana Rivas was a member of Augusto Pinochets dreaded DINA secret police); Greg Kohs's AlphaGo (a record of a week-long tournament between Google's DeepMind team and the world's best Go players); James Crump's Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco (Jessica Lange, Patti D'Arbanville, Grace Jones, Jerry Hall, Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint-Laurent reflect on the career of a celebrated fashion illustrator); Paul Wright's Arcadia (an archive celebration of Britain's relationship to the land scored by Portishead's Adrian Utley and Goldfrapp's Will Gregory); Sabiha Sumar's Azmaish: A Journey Through the Subcontinent (a female Pakistani director joins Indian actress Kalki Koechlin to see how attitudes towards women are changing in their homelands); Rob Curry and Tim Plester's The Ballad of Shirley Collins (a fond tribute to the folk revival legend who battles bravely to sing again after mysteriously losing her voice in 1980); Jung Yoon-suk's Bamseom Pirates Soul Inferno (a snapshot of a provocative South Korean punk activist band); Anne-Marie Copestake's A Blemished Code (a tribute to pioneering holographic artist Margaret Benyon); Elvira Lind's Bobbi Jene (a profile of dancer Bobbi Jene Smith as she leaves Israel to return to the United States); Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Sarvestani's Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (an insight into conditions inside the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea); Michael Woodward's The Climb (an account of an illegal ascent of The Shard by six women representing Greenpeace); Sally Aitken's David Stratton: A Cinematic Life (a look at the seven-decade career of a revered Australian film critic); Radu Jude's The Dead Nation (an archival account of daily life in pre-Second World War Romania); Everardo González Devil's Freedom (a sobering account of the Mexican drug war that has claimed 100,000 lives in the last five years); Shevaun Mizrahi's Distant Constellation (the residents of an Istanbul retirement home reflect upon their lives); Peter Bratt's Dolores (a tribute to Dolores Huerta, who raised 11 children, endured endless prejudice and survived a police beating after helping César Chavez found America's first farm workers' union); Joshua Bonnetta and JP Sniadecki's El Mar La Mar (a 16mm study of the impact of climate, vegetation, animals and humans on the Sonoran Desert); Andrea Luka Zimmerman's Erase and Forget (a memoir of Vietnam veteran James Gordon `Bo' Gritz, who inspired the characters of John Rambo and A-Team leader John `Hannibal' Smith); Tony Zierra's Filmworker (an account of actor Leon Vitali's working relationship with director Stanley Kubrick); Greg Barker's The Final Year (Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama discuss the president's foreign policy endgame); Narimane Mari's Les Fort des Fous (a playful meditation on the French colonial legacy in North Africa and the current Mediterranean migration crisis); Karam Gill's G Funk (an account of how childhood friends Warren G, Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg melded Motown, funk, R&B and gangsta rap); Matthew Booth and Austin Jack Lynch's Gray House (David Lynch's son debuts with an artful odyssey to Texas, North Dakota, Oregon and California); Moyra Davey's Hemlock Forest (a personal essay on the life and films of Chantal Akerman); Maite Alberdi's The Grown-Ups (a poignant account of the romance between Chilean fortysomethings Anita and Andres, who have been prevented from marrying because they have Down's Syndrome); William Badgley's Here to Be Heard: The Story of The Slits (a chronicle of the influential British punk band); Steven Eastwood's Island (a sensitive study of terminal cancer patients on the Isle of Wight); Brett Morgen's Jane (a treatise on the life, work and influence of octogenarian primatologist Jane Goodall that makes poignant use of previous unseen archive footage shot by her ex-husband Hugo van Lawick); Lucy Cohen's Kingdom of Us (an account of how Kenilworth mum Vikie Shanks helped her seven children cope with their father's suicide); Zhou Chen's Life Imitation (a dissertation on a post-human digital world in which gaming, social media and sexting replace communication and contact); Aaron Kopp's Liyana (artist Shofela Coker animates an account of five children from a self-sustaining agricultural orphanage in Swaziland teaming with South African author Gcina Mhlophe on a story based on their lives); Gustavo Salmerón's Lots of Kids, A Monkey and a Castle (a first-time feature edited down from 400 hours of home movies centring on the director's septuagenarian mother, Julita, and her reluctant departure from the castle where she raised her six children); Superflex's The Maersk Opera (an exploration of the contentious Copenhagen edifice donated by the late shipping magnate Mærsk McKinney-Møller); Sinéad O'Shea's A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot (an investigation into paramilitary activity in Ireland that centres on Derry mother Majella O'Donnell's decision to have her teenage son Philly shot in both legs); Jennifer Peedom's Mountain (a travelogue about the world's highest peaks inspired by Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind and narrated by Willem Dafoe); Sonia Kronlund's The Prince of Nothingwood (a portrait of prolific Afghan actor-director Salim Shaheen); Kate Hickey's Roller Dreams (a recollection of the 1980s heyday of roller-dancing in Venice Beach); Carlo Guillermo Proto's Resurrecting Hassan (a grieving family of blind Montreal metro singers consult Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi about resurrecting their drowned seven year-old son); Denis Côté's A Skin So Soft (an intimate profile of body sculptors Jean-François Bouchard, Cédric Doyon, Benoit Lapierre, Maxim Lemire, Alexis Légaré and Ronald Yang); Yves Hinant and Jean Libon's So Help Me God (a portrait of uncompromising judge Anne Gruwez, in which she reopens the cold case of the brutal murder of two Belgian prostitutes); Pat Collins's Song of Granite (a profile of Irish singer Joe Heaney); Filipa César's Spell Reel (an account of how film-makers Sana Na N'Hada, Flora Gomes, José Bolama Cobumba and Josefina Crato chronicled Guinea-Bissau's war of independence with Portugal); Rory Kennedy's Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton (a biodoc of the American who transformed the sport of big wave surfing); Michael Glawogger and Monika Willi's Untitled (a study of physical labour in Africa, Italy and the Balkans that marked the swan song of Austrian maestro Glawogger, who succumbed to malaria while filming in Liberia); Barbet Schroeder's The Venerable W (a profile of Ashin Wirathu, the Buddhist monk whose rabidly Islamophobic sermons have helped spark the persecution of Myanmar's beleagured Rohingya minority that has been so disappointingly disregarded by Aung San Suu Kyi); and Marc J. Francis and Max Pugh's Walk With Me (Benedict Cumberbatch narrates a study of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village monastery in south-western France).