The Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals' hospitality extends once again this year, with a generous invitational of local and international filmmakers attending screenings of their films. The major international guest this time around is one Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold), whose latest film Offside exhibits in all four main centres. Filmmakers in person have yet to be confirmed for Christchurch and Dunedin, but can be sampled for Auckland and Wellington respectively.

Latest Additions: CALEB STARRENBURG tallies the body count in Kim Jee-woon's violent and energetic A Bittersweet Life; BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM revisits Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, a powerful and disturbing classic of cinema; TIM WONG writes enthusiastically about this year's Out of the Past programme and potentially the festival's best film, The Death of Mr Lazarescu; MUBARAK ALI juggles the neo-realism and quasi-documentary reality of In Between Days, Offside and Oxhide.