Best bits from the Film Festival ..

The hauntingly beautiful and terrifying landscapes in The Rover and Tom at the Farm. The empty distance weighs heavy on the mood.

Tom and his dead lover’s brother dancing in the barn, a scene both creepy and funny in equal measure.

The Rover director, David Michôd giving his geo-political commentary on Tony Abbott, the economy and how to finish a sentence in a Q&A session.

Ethan Hawke as father to Mason in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, telling him that elves could seem just as believable as whales, massive beasts of the unknown depths; giving him a ‘Black Album’ of the Beatles by compiling John, Paul, George & Ringo’s solo music after they split up into potentially the best mix tape ever; and discussing the future of Star Wars on their overnight camping trip.

  GUY PEARCE!

The opening sequence of Hiroshima Mon Amour – you destroy me, you are good for me. The heaviness of forgetting and the stories that can’t be told or heard at odds with the idea of commemorating and moving on.

Her voice, Her poetic repetitive lines. I meet you, I remember you. His answer – you saw nothing in Hiroshima, nothing.

That otherworldly, beautiful chameleon Tilda Swinton, in shockingly humorous form in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer.

The absolute size ten chaos of Snowpiercer. The transition from the bleak, desolate tail end of the train to the overbright, colour-drenched first class carriages. You’d be forgiven for thinking the violence and death shouldn’t travel this far up the train, and then you get to the class-room scene…and shit REALLY hits the fan.

Also, John Hurt remains the height of dignity with mere rags and sawn-off limbs. How do you get a voice that magnificent?

And, finally, a quest for reality, or something better than, in Kumiko the Treasure Hunter. This one had me thinking for days. Perhaps we should learn to put aside others’ views and accept our own perception is all that matters in pursuing our dreams?