The season opens with a warm, funny and eccentric Edwardian comedy with a few gentle truths about family, death and faith beneath its fanciful reincarnation plot. Peter O'Toole gives a wickedly dry performance as an old man with little time or affection for his son.

Meryl Streep stars as a discliplinarian nun in charge of a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964. When she becomes suspicious that the liberal priest is paying undue attention to the school's first black student, she is determined to expose the truth and force him to leave. A powerful tale of the consequences of blind moral justice.

Retired after 40 years of tedious work, O - the abbreviation for the common Norwegian first name gradually becomes as eccentric as his name suggests to English ears. His increasingly irrational and bizarre behaviour is described with sympathy and deadpan humour in a warm and humane comedy.

Anne Michael's award-winning and best-selling novel focuses on a writer struggling to come to terms with the horrors of his childhood in war-time Poland, including his sister's mysterious disappearance. This powerful adaptation explores the effects of his traumatic past on his emotions and relationships in the present.

The Visitor is a gentle and beautifully observed character study of a melancholy American professor whose quiet and dull life is slowly changed by meeting two lively illegal immigrants living in his New York flat. Another excellent film by the director/writer of The Station Agent.

The lives of six people are interwoven in a complex drama of elaborate coincidences set in Germany's Turkish immigrant community. Beautifully acted and compelling, the film explores the relations between the host and immigrant communities, the tensions between first and second-generation immigrants and the wider political issues.

At the age of 82, Wajda, a central figure in Polish cinema since the '50s, tackles the national and personal tragedy of Katyn, the massacre of thousands of Polish officers, including the director's father, in 1940 on Stalin's orders. A powerful and sombre memorial to the victims.

An exhilarating documentary, based on a combination of memoir and reconstruction, Man on Wire brings to life not only Philippe Petit's incredible feat - walking across a tightrope between the twin towers in 1974 - but also the months of meticulous planning that preceded it.

This tense and atmospheric film describes, in flashback, a husband's increasingly desperate attempts to free his wife who has been arrested for a murder she did not commit. Another in the recent rich vein of fast-paced French thrillers such as Tell No-one and The Beat That My Heart Skipped.

A charming romantic comedy set in a Beirut beauty parlour, this story of five women's relationships and anxieties derives particular interest from its setting against a background of a restricted society. Through Caramel, the director shows that a different life exists in Lebanon behind the civil unrest.

Truffaut's third film, beautifully photographed in black-and-white widescreen, tells the story of two close friends - both writers, one German, one French - both in love with the charismatic, destructive Catherine between 1912 and the mid-1930s. A cinematic classic – romantic, playful and bittersweet

In Antarctica, a group of scientists is gathered in the harsh and isolated conditions of the last great wilderness to escape from civilisation and to explore the nature of life and the threats to its future. Werner Herzog's remarkable documentary illuminates the issues through stunning images and perceptive narration.

An engaging film set in contemporary London, which features a great comic performance by the teenage star Thomas Turgoose, as Tommo, a runaway from Nottingham. On arrival in London, Tommo makes friends with Marek, a Polish immigrant and they both develop a crush on a local French waitress Maria.

In this engrossing film, Kristin Scott Thomas stars as a former doctor who has been released from prison after 15 years. She goes to live with her sister and gradually reintegrates into both family and society, eventually allowing herself to tell her side of the story about her mysterious past.

A small-time smuggler in a poverty-stricken Uruguayan village decides to make his fortune by building a 5-star loo for the use of the Pope and his entourage on a brief visit in 1988. A sweet and tender comedy, enriched by shrewd observation and excellent acting.

A Palestinian widow's lemon grove, her sole source of income, is deemed a threat to national security when the Israeli defence minister moves in next door. As she fights back, this brave and honest film exposes the brutal forces of oppression facing people on both sides of the conflict in the West Bank.

Both Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei won BAFTAs for their excellent performances in this film about an ageing wrestler trying to come to terms with life outside the ring after suffering a heart attack, but facing the temptation to return to the spotlight.

Emma's Bliss is a touching story of two outcasts; a contented and self-contained pig farmer and a terminally ill second-hand car salesman who literally crashes into her Eden. The two polar opposites learn to respect each other in a kind of fairy tale told with wit and visual imagination.