Peace One Day is the opening film for the festival. It charts the remarkable five-year journey of the filmmaker Jeremy Gilley as he meets heads of state, Noble Peace Laureates, aid agencies, freedom fighters, media moguls, the innocent victims of war and, eventually, everyone who was anyone at the UN. An individual genuinely can make a difference: the film documented and inspired the establishment of the United Nations International Day of Peace as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, now 21st September annually.

Werner Herzog's latest film The White Diamond is about the daring adventure of exploring the rainforest canopy with a novel flying device - the Jungle Airship. Airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his helium-filled invention above the tree tops. But this logistic effort will not be without risk. Twelve years ago, a similar expedition into the unique habitat of the canopy ended in disaster when Dorrington's friend Dieter Plage fell to his death.

Since 1952 countless films, documentaries, and reports have been made about Miková, the small village in Eastern Slovakia with a population of one hundred and fifty from where Andy Warhol's family emigrated to the US. Focussing on his relatives who still live there, I Am From Nowhere examines with humour the media's obsession with Miková, thus reflecting on fame, filming as well as being filmed, and on Warhol's legendary "15 minutes of fame".

My Louis Armstrong Years is the fabulous story of a mother, Glinda, and her musical prodigy son, Chantz (Chance), given the name because he should never have been born. They are originally from Mississipi, where the legends of gospel are merged with perpetual poverty. Glinda and Chantz spend their life on the road. Chantz plays the trumpet, dances in the street and subway, and performs on the world's most prestigious stages. The love-hate relationship between Glinda and her son spices the film with conflict and tenderness.

A breathtaking portrait of a civilian population in wartime, The Damned and The Sacred presents the current Chechen war through the perspective of a traditional youth dance troupe, its coach, and others in its circle. As they witness bombings and cope with checkpoints and unfamiliar soldiers, the troupe members stubbornly prepare a tour of western Europe. Featuring exciting and often thrilling dances it presents a group of people struggling to declare and maintain their cultural independence.

Do we really know those who are closest to us?
Do we want to know them? And they? Do they really want us to know them? Or not?

In this award-winning documentary, a son tries to understand the troubled past of his 79-year-old mother, Fleurette. Notwithstanding her resistance to his questions, little by little, throughout the film, she reveals secret or voluntarily forgotten events. It is almost another life that emerges like a revelation.

In 1939, Nicholas Winton personally and by his own initiative saved the lives of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and brought them across Hitler's Germany to his native Britain. For nearly 50 years, he kept secret how he rescued these children, but now he is often known as "Britain's Schindler." Winner of the International Emmy for 'Outstanding Documentary', The Power of Good describes how the caring of one man can make a difference to the lives of others.

Cuban, black, santero, homosexual, pro-revolutionary, the musician Igancio Willa, aka Bola de Nieve or Snowball, is one of the Latin American myths of the 20th centuary. Hailed as a 'black Garcia Lorca', who was this man who, with the piano and his voice, made Edith Piaf, Andrés Segovia, Pablo Neruda, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén and Pedro Almodóvar tremble with emotion? We follow the life of this unique person, practically unknown except to the many people who loved him.