FILM / Remains of the Day, best of the rest: Now Showing: Sheila Johnston picks over the highlights of the London Film Festival and introduces a competition and free ticket offers

The London Film Festival opened last night, with a gala screening of the new James Ivory film The Remains of the Day, and continues until 21 November with a beanfeast of movies from around the world. Some screenings may already be sold out, but, according to press office supremo Tim Cole, ticket demand has been very even, with a few places available for films right across the board. Often, returns are available on the door, even for sold-out performances.

Anyway, readers unable to net a ticket for star turns like Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Chen Kaige's Farewell to My Concubine should take comfort from the fact that the higher-profile movies already have British distribution (where this is the case, it is marked in the programme booklet) and will open here shortly.

The recommendations below are culled from films showing in the first week, and for which seats were still available at press time (midday Thursday). Bookings for all venues can be made at the National Film Theatre box-office (South Bank, London SE1; tel 071- 928 3232), or at the special ticket booth on Leicester Square.

One of the best films still up for grabs is The Scent of Green Papaya (tomorrow 8.45pm NFT1), which was highly acclaimed at Cannes this year and won the prestigious Camera d'Or for Best First Feature. Set in Vietnam (though shot, astonishingly, in a studio near Paris), it's the story of a young woman working for a family in Fifties Saigon, and enslaved to them not only by her social status but also by her secret love for one of the brothers.

La Crise (tomorrow 6.30pm NFT1) is a comedy by Coline Serreau, whose Trois hommes et un couffin was remade in America as the hugely successful Three Men and a Baby. The new film is another wicked, woman's-eye- tour through the male psyche as the hero's midlife crisis prompts a chain of disasters.

Of the American independents, two of this week's films look like good bets. Twenty Bucks (tomorrow 6.45pm ICA) is a remake / update of an old idea - the progress of a dollars 20 bill is the pretext for a colourful cross-section of modern urban society, and for lively cameos from character actors like Christopher Lloyd, Steve Buscemi and Linda Hunt. Directed by an Iranian film-maker living in New York, Manhattan By Numbers (Thurs 4.15pm NFT1 and Sat 13 Nov 11.00am NFT1) is a different 'odyssey film', as an out-of-work journalist travels the length and breadth of the city in search of a job.

Connoisseurs of vintage independent cinema are alerted to an all-night screening of rare Andy Warhol films from the Sixties, featuring Factory superstars like Edie Sedgewick and such typically Warholesque highlights as Factory photographer Billy Linich having a haircut. Bring a pillow and a sleeping bag (Tomorrow 11.30pm ICA).

The British section looks thin (major new films like Tom and Viv and Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands seem to have been unavailable). The first week's line-up includes In Custody. A poignant drama about the meeting between a famous Indian poet and one of his admirers, it's the first film directed by Ismail Merchant, James Ivory's producer (Sunday 5.45pm NFT1).

Genghis Cohn, a self-styled 'Holocaust comedy', is adapted from Romain Gray's novel about a Jewish ventriloquist who dies at Dachau but comes back as a ghost to plague the Nazi who sent him before the firing squad. Anthony Sher, Robert Lindsay and Diana Rigg star, and there are still seats available for the matinee screening (Tuesday 2.00pm NFT1).

(Photographs omitted)