Conflict and music are the dominant themes in the diverse selection of documentaries showing this year in what has become one of the most popular annual festival strands. One of the most encouraging recent trends in film has been the very significant upsurge of interest in documentaries, which have been attracting cinema audiences in far greater numbers than they have for decades.

The themes in this year's season cover a wide range that include paedophilia (in Deliver Us From Evil), war victims in Uganda (Lost Children), gang life in the Haiti slums (Ghosts of Cité Soleil), US foreign policy (Why We Fight), the decline of an airline (Grounding: The Last Days of Swissair) and agricultural food preparation (We Feed the World), and there is an anti-environmentalist film (Mine Your Own Business). The programme offers some fascinating portraits of artists, from the Irish director who is the subject of Neil Jordan, Portrait to the architect featured in Sketches of Frank Gehry. The late Joe Strummer is commemorated in The Future is Unwritten, the great Scott Walker gives a rare, extended and revealing interview in 30 Century Man, and The Thrills make it to the big screen.