WHILE The Personal History of David Copperfield, Amando Iannucci’s whimsical and fresh take on one of Charles Dickens’s most beloved characters opened the annual festival — in which Alejandro Landes’s hallucinogenic thriller about child soldiers, Monos, scooped the best film award — it was brought to a very different close with Martin Scorsese’s gangster drama The Irishman from Netflix.

Reuniting Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci it’s a masterclass in acting and a fascinating use of de-ageing technology. But at three-and-a-half hours, it feels overly long and a tad self indulgent.

A standout feature was Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s wonderfully surreal and on point anti-racist and anti-nationalist satire. Set in Germany towards the end of the second world war, it centres on the young Jojo (stunning newcomer Roman Griffin Davis), an inept member of the Hitler Youth, whose closest friend is an imaginary Adolf Hitler (Waititi, on cracking form).

When he discovers his mother, superlatively played by Scarlett Johansson, has been hiding a young Jewish girl in their home it sends him into a moral and ethical battle with his imaginary friend and conscience.

The breakdown of a marriage is depicted in two very contrasting ways in William Nicholson’s Hope Gap, starring Annette Bening and Bill Nighy and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, featuring stellar performances by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, with the first about British repressed emotions while the second’s focus is on letting it all out, American style.

Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes is a compelling two-hander, with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. It’s a thought-provoking study of a staunch traditionalist and a progressive as they argue over the future of the Catholic Church.

The Peanut Butter Falcon is a gentle and charming contemporary Mark Twain-style adventure in which a young man with Down syndrome (newcomer Zack Gottsagen, a revelation) escapes from his nursing care home to pursue his dream of becoming a pro wrestler.

On his journey he meets up with small-town outlaw Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), also on the run, who takes him under his wing. LaBeouf and Gottsagen make a delightful pairing in this endearing buddy flick.

If you want to have your faith in human nature restored, then Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood is the perfect tonic. Tom Hanks gives an uncanny portrayal as children’s TV presenter Fred Rogers, who entertained generations of US kids and had an unfathomable impact on American culture.

The film asks whether he was too good to be true and the answer is sometimes people are exactly how they seem. In Rogers’s case, a kind man who loved entertaining youngsters.

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out has a stellar cast on top form — among them Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer and Don Johnson — coupled with a witty and smart script full of unexpected twists and turns in a sleek and stylish crime caper that’s a hugely entertaining ride — think Agatha Christie meets Murder She Wrote.

The most outlandish film in the festival, Quentin Dupieux’s truly bizarre comedy Deerskin, is about a man’s obsessive love for his designer deerskin jacket.

A barely recognisable Jean Dujardin is magnificent as the nutty Georges whose jacket talks to him. It brings a whole new meaning to a killer look.

This year, LFF was an eclectic affair which saw the number of films directed or co-directed by women rise to 40 per cent and that’s encouraging news. But let’s aim for 50 per cent next year, people.