A late, exclusive addition to the Auckland leg of the World Cinema Showcase, Elgar's Enigma follows composer Edward Elgar's life-long connection to his first love, Helen Weaver, who left him for a new life in New Zealand. Told through a subtle weave of archive, interview, re-enactment and performance, the documentary links Elgar's first, and last, major works to Helen herself and to her son, Kenneth Munro, who was killed in WWI. The archival material, a large proportion of which has come from the New Zealand Film Archive, forms a fascinating backdrop to Elgar's composition and illustrates the horrors of the war that inspired it. Renowned American cellist Lynn Harrell performs a moving interpretation of the concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Matthias Bamert. Director Annie Goldson will be present for a Q&A at both screenings (Wed 26/4, 6.15pm; Thur 27/4, 1.30pm, Academy Cinema). Of note, the NZSO will be performing Elgar's Cello Concerto in the main centres in May and June.

Oyster Farmer is one of those films that makes you glad to be a reviewer – nice enough for a rainy Easter Monday afternoon – but you’re glad you didn’t pay for the ticket. This tale of a city boy seeking refuge in the nether reaches of New South Wales’s Hawkesbury River is really just an excuse to showcase the stunning scenery of the area and catalogue the oyster farmers’ peculiar way of life – a life that is fast disappearing.

This year’s World Cinema Showcase might well be remembered for unearthing two performers of fierce and infectious talent: Roman Duris, whose feverish turn as a punk pianist in The Beat My Heart Skipped earmarks him for even bigger and brighter things, and Amy Adams, simply irresistible as a loony pregos sister-in-law in the coolly detached Junebug.

Le Grande Voyage is a French and Moroccan collaboration. It follows Reda, a French youth of Moroccan descent (his parents have lived there for thirty years), who is suddenly compelled to take his devoutly religious father on a road-trip. And not just any road trip – a drive from France to Mecca – in order for his father to fulfil one of the holy pillars of Islam.

There was scattered applause at the end of my screening of Manderlay, so a few people obviously found it edifying. At the time I was somewhat bewildered. What had we just seen?

The second installment in Lars von Trier’s America trilogy takes up the story where Dogville left off. Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard after Nicole Kidman quit the production), her father, and his band of gangsters, stop at a farm called Manderlay where slavery is still practiced despite it being 70 years since its abolition. Grace uses her father’s power to force freedom upon the slaves and teach the slave owners a lesson. You can probably see where this is going.

Omnibus films have never rocked my boat – most are uneven, fractured affairs. Take the high-profile but lopsided Eros (yet to be released here), an all-star triple team that began elatedly with Wong Kar-wai’s The Hand, before deteriorating from bad (Soderbergh’s Equilibrium) to excruciatingly worse (Antonioni’s Il filo pericoloso delle cose). Tickets, the latest tri-directorial effort to hit the festival circuit, managed to buck my extreme prejudice against all odds: it’s one of the more satisfying and succinct takes on the omnibus in recent memory. For once, it also feels like a collaboration.

(Darwin's Nightmare)
His eyes reddened by a lack of sleep, and probably from the ammonia used in a fish frying operation nearby, night watchman Raphael guards a fish research institution with his hands steadfast and ready to fire poison tipped arrows at trespassers. The edict is simple, kill anyone who comes on site. He’s working for a paltry $1 a night, and hopes for a civil war so that he can join the army and earn a higher salary. ‘We need more education’ he speaks of others like himself. Education is certainly necessary, but what Raphael and his kinsman of Tanzania need is a miracle.

Two identical women, strangers with the same talent for music, the same heart condition and surprisingly similar lives; one undeniable feature of this film is its uniqueness. In a refreshing divergence from many of today’s films, The Double Life of Veronique is unpredictable and original.

Junebug tackles the universal and somewhat cliché subject of meeting the in-laws. A Chicago art dealer goes to North Carolina to meet her new husband’s family, she finds herself in the midst of a dysfunctional family at crisis point. The film begins with several random men yodelling, one thinks this might come into context further in the film, but it never does. There were several such incidents where I struggled to grasp the significance of the scene.

(Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles)
For some time now, I’ve entertained the notion of moving to Japan to teach English for a year. Numerous factors have quashed this venture to date: finance, procrastination, my bubble-like comfort zone. People tell me that students prefer “gaijin” to teach them the language; that being Chinese won’t be to my advantage; that China and Japan don’t exactly get along. None of which are a deterrent, but all this forewarning does beg the question: is all this bad blood for real? Not so long ago, anti-Japanese protests erupted in China, some escalating into riots over a textbook that apparently whitewashes Japan’s WWII atrocities. More recently, Chinese actresses slipped into Kimonos in the film adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, an atrocity all of its own that disgruntled those on either side of the ditch. According to news reports I google, diplomacy is at a three-decade low. Now I’m having second thoughts.

Lower City (Cidade Baixa) is a steamy love triangle set in the seedier side of coastal Brazil. Two friends, Deco and Naldinho, offer a lift to a prostitute in their cargo boat. Both fall in love with her and a violent jealousy comes between them. The film begins visceral – sex, blood, a stabbing, and cockfights are presented in gritty matte close-ups. The photography throughout is beautiful. The two friends, ably played by Wagner Moura and Lazaro Ramos (both from 2003’s Brazilian jail-film Carandiru), pledge false allegiance to each other as both feel their love for Karinna burgeon and the casual threesome develops into a bitter rivalry.

Make no mistake: Vincent Ward’s River Queen is made of seductive, intensely ambitious stuff, a film as unfairly received as it has been unconsciously yearned for. But just imagine for a moment colonial New Zealand in the hands of a devilish Nick Cave, blazoned with violence, anarchy, and disconcerting beauty. A brutalised River Queen of sorts, The Proposition turns 19th century Australia into an outback inferno: it deafens us with gunfire, bulldozes us with the rape and pillage of the indigenous, and wallops us with its frequent savagery and gore.

Daunted by yet another opening night soiree, the pattern has become all too familiar of late: alcohol in several varieties, finger food that’s always just out of reach, claustrophobic mingling, exceedingly loud music. But never mind the fact that I couldn’t hear my own voice; this was heady, rambunctious stuff, a real mood setter for the main attraction. So already bludgeoned by the rhythm of live African drum beats, Tsotsi’s thumping title sequence came as no surprise – a swagger through the mean streets of shantytown South Africa that gathers immediate emotional force when a volatile Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) accosts an elderly man on a train, taking his money before stabbing him in the presence of a cab-full of commuters. This is one angry kid: beating his friend to a pulp; frightening the living shit out of the disabled; and the kicker, jacking a Beamer and leaving its owner for dead.