Among the eye-catching world premieres at this year's New York film festival was the opening night screening Captain Phillips from British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, based on the true story of the captain of a cargo ship taken hostage by Somali pirates.

Suspensful and satisfyingly complex, it's an an exceptional action thriller which takes a look at the politics of power and the fate of “the wretched of the earth.”

A Touch Of Sin is a harrowing, multi-layered drama about life, death and the wages of capitalism in China from director Jia Zhangke and Omar, the latest from Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, is a tense thriller about the daily challenges of love, friendship and ideology in the occupied territories. Other premieres of note included Claude Lanzmann’s The Last Of The Unjust about the fate of the Jewish inhabitants of the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia during WWII and Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley an engrossing though lengthy inquiry into the troubled US academic institution.

Other documentaries of note were The Missing Picture by Rithy Pahn, based on the director’s memories of four years spent under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the destruction of his family and his culture, and Pilipino Lav Diaz’s Norte The End of History. In this the lives of two strangers — one rich, one poor — become tragically intertwined when the former commits a double murder the poorer is forced to take the rap.

It's a reminder of a world which creates the conditions engendering such harrowing stories.

Rita Di Santo