Apt Pupil

Director Bryan Singer follows The Usual Suspects with this Stephen King story, a psychological horror movie seeped in sinister atmosphere. In this compelling meditation on the individual's capacity for evil, Brad Renfro plays a bright, inquisitive high school student who takes his interest in the Holocaust to extremes when he recognises a fugitive Nazi war criminal (Ian McKellen) and offers not to expose him in exchange for details of the man's horrific past activities.

April 21st, 8.40 p.m. Claire Dolan

SURPRISINGLY, Lodge Kerrigan's thoughtful moral tale, one of the most intriguing in competition at Cannes last year, has yet to find distribution here, so this opportunity ought to be seized. Katrin Cartlidge gives a brilliantly judged performance as the eponymous Claire Dolan, a native of Howth, Co Dublin, who works as a prostitute in New York to pay off a substantial debt to her callous, unscrupulous pimp, who's played with menace-dripping presence by Colm Meaney.

April 16th, 8.40 p.m.

Dance Me To My Song

ROLF de Heer's bold, intense and wholly uncompromised drama features Heather Rose, who came up with the storyline and, like her pivotal character in the film, has severe cerebral palsy. The film is as direct in its exploration of her emotional and sexual desires as in its depiction of the psychological and physical cruelty inflicted on her by an uncaring carer. Although it falters in a pat resolution, it remains a moving yet resolutely unsentimental experience.

April 16th, 6.10 p.m.

Head On

THIS provocative and sensual first feature from the Greek-Australian lesbian director, Ana Kokkinos, charts an eventful and often traumatic 24 hours in the life of a handsome and voraciously sexually active 19-year-old coming to terms with his homosexuality and his rigidly conservative Greek immigrant parents. It is powered by the uninhibited central performance of Alex Dimitriades, and by its unflinching depiction of Melbourne as a racial melting pot positively simmering with tension.

April 22nd, 9 p.m.

Last Night

THE bright Canadian talent that is Don McKellar features in three of the festival's films - as an actor in The Red Violin (which he also co-wrote) and eXistenZ, and as the writer, director and star of Last Night, a thought-provoking, quirkily humorous and often moving picture observing disparate characters as they spend the last six hours before the end of the world. McKellar is joined in a solid cast by Sandra Oh, Calum Keith Rennie and, in a cameo role, David Cronenberg.

April 18th, 9 p.m.

The Lovers Of The Arctic Circle

FROM Julio Medem, the Spanish director of Vacas and The Red Squirrel, comes a quite magical and throughly engaging love story following its protagonists from the ages of eight to 25, and the parallel relationship between the boy's mother and the girl's father. Photographed in beautiful widescreen images on Madrid and Finnish locations, Medem's film is rooted in coincidences which seduce the suspension of disbelief.

April 17th, 11 a.m.

Night Train

DESPITE its criminal backgrounding, this Dublin drama written by Aodhan Madden is essentially a low-key character study which is allowed to breathe and develop under John Lynch's unshowy direction. He elicits persuasive performances from the two versatile actors at his film's centre, John Hurt and Brenda Blethyn, as a middle-aged minor criminal on the run and the mousey, lonely woman in whose home he rents a room.

April 24th, 6.30 p.m.

The Powder Keg

ALTHOUGH set over three years ago, there is an urgent topicality to this eyeopening political drama from the Serbian director, Goran Paskaljevic. The film is set over one wild and crazy night in his native Belgrade - in November 1995, while the Dayton Peace Agreement was being finalised - as it follows the interlinked destinies of different characters. The result is an energetic and involving illustration of chaos and conflict that's sparked by some savage humour.

April 24th, 6.40 p.m.

A Simple Plan

PUTTING his Evil Dead past far behind him, director Sam Raimi displays an unexpected maturity and a real skill for building and sustaining tension in this taut psychological thriller, a moral tale of lives corrupted and destroyed by money. Adapted by Scott B. Smith from his own novel, it features fine performances from Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as brothers who discover a crashed aircraft and a bag containing over $4 million, with Bridget Fonda in a variation on Lady Macbeth as Paxton's wife.

April 23rd, 11.15 p.m.

Touch Of Evil

ALREADY re-edited twice for rereleases, Orson Welles's immensely stylish and influential 1958 thriller can finally be seen in a version closer to Welles's original intentions. Working from a 58-page memo written by Welles - describing in detail his suggested changes to a studio cut of the film - producer Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch, the Oscar-winning film editor and sound mixer of The English Patient, have reconstructed the film as it was intended to be seen. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Welles himself head the cast.

April 18th, 6.10 p.m.