A scene from the festival's opening night film, The Lobster starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz,
The word "surreal" suffers, like "awesome" from being over-used to describe stuff that simply isn't. Time for the festival to restore some lustre with some truly surreal titles. The word and its variations appear half a dozen times in the 2015 programme. And not just in the art movie section either.
No, the festival gets off to a surreal start in Auckland with The Lobster, the Cannes Jury Prize-winning satire from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, in which Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz (pictured) live in a world where single adults must find a partner or be transformed into an animal of their choice. Another Cannes contender getting the surreal tag is Tale of Tales in which Salma Hayek stars in a fairytale world based on a book of ancient Neapolitan folk stories featuring ogres, giant fleas and sea monsters in supporting roles. It's a leap into the fantastic from Italian director Matteo Garrone after films of gritty realism like Gomorrah.
There's also surrealism of many shades elsewhere, whether it's the Amazon shaman adventure of Embrace of the Serpent or Swedish director Roy Andersson's new foray into the absurd, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.
Another film coming almost direct from its debut at Cannes is Amy. Directed by Asif Kapadia, who profiled the late Ayrton Senna in Senna, Amy is a stirring, deeply sad portrait of Amy Winehouse. Using personal videos and photos along with performance and interview footage, and interviews including her parents, friends, band mates, and ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, the film tracks Winehouse from her sassy, joyful early days, right through to the bitter end.
In contrast is Mavis!, which tells the story of Mavis Staples, rich with six decades of music and song, and plenty of personal tales of her life both on stage and off, which has transcended genre and racism. Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Chuck D, and her recent producer, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy are among those who appear to testify to Staples' great work, and enduring spirit.
Drawing from the same timespan, but a different locale is The Wrecking Crew, a guide to the work and legacy of a loose Los Angeles group of some of the world's best session musicians, the unsung heroes who sprinkled their magic dust on a staggering list of hits. And jumping to the other side of the control room glass is Lambert & Stamp, a candid, fun portrayal of the two young men who managed and wrangled The Who, and helped them overcome the 60s fame-machine to turn out the likes of Tommy.
It's not all sedate subtitled flicks at this year's festival. Oh no. There's several major adrenalin surges on offer from action heroes who actually did their own stunts - like base jumping pioneer Carl Boenish whose career of parachuting from anything that wasn't an aircraft is caught in all its vertiginous glory in Sunshine Superman.
The festival climbs to even higher heights in Meru, as its cameras follow three climbers attempting to be the first to conquer the 6400m Himalayan peak of the title.
Also set in the Himalayas is Sherpa, a doco by Australian director Jennifer Peedom looking at the Everest climbing industry and the role of the Nepalese guides in what remains an infinitely risky business.
Still on ice but back at ground level is Red Army, a look back at the virtually unbeatable Soviet Union ice hockey teams - and how they went from Cold War propaganda squad to defectors to the high-paying North American National Hockey League in the 1980s.
The programme's sport section also offers more daredevilry in with a doco on 70s stunt-riding legend Evel Knievel in Being Evel, and there's an exploration of movie star Steve McQueen's motor racing obsession in The Man & Le Mans.
You'll be hard-pressed to find a photo of anyone in the programme exuding more personal style or personality than Iris Apfel, the New York interior designer who furnished the White House nine times. She's the subject of Iris, a doco study by the late Albert Maysies, which follows the-then 93-year-old Apfel as she goes about her stylish business and keeps her eye on changing fashions through those big round window glasses of hers.
Biographical dramas Yves Saint Laurent appear to remain, as they say, "on trend" - Saint Laurent is the second screen profile of the designer in recent years and this one promises to be the unauthorised version as it jumps back and forth through the man's life and times. Predictably, it won Best Costume Design at the Cesar Awards - the French Oscars - earlier this year.
Though Hollywood costume designer George Kelly may not quite be a household name, he certainly dressed some after moving to Los Angeles in 1932 - with his boyfriend, an Englishman named Archie Leach, an aspiring actor who soon became leading man Cary Grant.
Australian director Gillian Armstrong's story on Kelly's life Women He's Undressed is based on Kelly's posthumously discovered memoir.
Restored prints of Charlie Chaplin's films The Kid and The Immigrant get the backing of the Auckland Philharmonia in a performance on the last weekend of the festival, with Marc Taddei conducting Chaplin's own symphonic score for The Kid, and a new soundtrack for The Immigrant.
Other ghosts of Hollywood past putting in an appearance include Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in Monroe's final film, the 1961 John Huston cowboy drama The Misfits, while the myth of Marlon Brando is explored in the documentary Listen to Me Marlon.
Funny as it might sound but Turbo Kid, the retro-futuristic post apocalyptic BMX action comedy (pictured) is possibly the nicest film in the The Incredibly Strange section of the festival. It's got a New Zealand connection with local film champion Ant Timpson - also the Incredibly Strange programmer - who is one of the producers on the low-budget flick written and directed by the RKSS collective from Montreal and starring some Kiwi actors in supporting roles.
Timpson is also an executive producer on local gonzo gory metal horror-comedy Deathgasm from special effects specialist-turned-director Jason Le Howden, which is also among this year's Incredibly Strange offerings. Both sound like they'll be a hoot.
What should be the most eyebrow-raising film of the festival is Love 3D from perpetually provocative director Gaspar Noe, which features possibly the first 3D sex scenes in an arthouse film. It had midnight screenings in Cannes but it seemed the high heels on the red carpet rule there raised more more controversy than Noe's explicit scenes. Still, Variety said it made "Fifty Shades of Grey look like [the 1959 Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie] Pillow Talk".
Writer Alex Garland makes his directorial debut with Ex Machina, what looks like a severely stylish cerebral sci-fi film about a tech guru (Oscar Isaac again) who has invented Ava, a sentient robot with the face of Swedish actor Alicia Vikander. He invites an employee to give her the Turing test - did you pay attention during The Imitation Game? - to see if she might qualify her as human. And the mind games begin ... .
In Dutch doco Alice Cares, it appears the droid future might already be here with its study of how a robot is providing company to elderly people living alone.
The festival gives us the first - legal - chance to see a couple of American films that might not have otherwise made it to the big screen locally.
A Most Violent Year, starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac (pictured) is the latest from writer-director J.C. Chandor who memorably took on Wall Street's pre-GFC dubious behaviour in Margin Call. This time he's in a different part of town in 1981 for a story about how Isaac's character (a Michael Corleone lookalike), resorts to mob tactics to get ahead in his New York heating oil supply business.
True, Inherent Vice can only loosely be described as a crime film. But Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel has Joaquin Phoenix as a 1970s Californian beach bum cum private eye in a drug-fuelled story the programme describes as "evocatively incomprehensible".
Italy offers up two mob movies - the crime family revenge drama of Black Souls and the comedy with the jovial title The Mafia Kills Only in Summer.
Veteran Japanese director Takashi Miike delivers his genre-bending spin on the mob movie in Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War by adding vampires.
But the toughest crime movies in this year's programme seem to be from Mexico - 600 Miles stars Tim Roth as an ATF agent abducted by a young gun runner, while Cartel Land captures the drug war on both sides of the US-Mexican border.
The 3D 10,000 Years Later is the first fully CGI film from China - its soundtrack was done by Wellington's Pow! Post - with a futuristic martial arts story.
Other major animated features include the latest from Japan's Studio Ghibli, When Marnie Was There based on the novel by Joan G. Robinson.
The festival also includes its regular Animation Now, Animation for Kids and Toons for Tots programmes but there is one cartoon definitely aimed at grown-ups - Wrinkles, the Spanish English-dubbed tale of two room-mates in a retirement home, with one of them deciding he needs to escape.
There is not one but two movies in this year's festival where sheep play a crucial role.
One is called Ram (pictured). The other is called Lamb.
The former is an Icelandic feature about two estranged sheep farming brothers and it won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes last month.
The latter is a story about an Ethiopian boy who would prefer to cook rather than farm and who has to save his pet lamb from turning up in an upcoming holiday feast.
What: The New Zealand International Film Festival programme, out on Tuesday
When and where: Opens in Auckland with screenings at the Civic, SkyCity Theatre, Rialto Cinemas, Event Cinemas Queen St and Academy Cinema from July 16 until August 2
For more info: www.nziff.co.nz
River Haven features a cafe, vineyard, wellness space, and The Bugger Inn pub.