Do you feel lucky?

The Regus London Film Festival is showcasing plenty of big names, but why not take a risk and see some of the 'smaller' offerings? Ryan Gilbey picks 10 that might just blow you away

Film festivals can be terrible places for a control freak. All those movies, none of which you know anything about, except for a rave review in the festival programme. (Everything gets a rave review in the festival programme. That's the point of the festival programme.) So you go for the big guns – which, in the case of this year's Regus London Film Festival, would be the Eminem film, 8 Mile, a fictionalised version of the rapper's life story directed by Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential); or Peter Mullan's Vatican-baiting The Magdalene Sisters, hot from its triumph at the Venice film festival; or Roman Polanski's Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist. But tickets for those have been snapped up years before they were made, usually by employees of whichever blood-sucking credit card company is serving as sponsor. Inevitably you will find yourself tramping out of Screen 2, having just watched something that the festival programme described as "striking", only to encounter in the foyer the audience from Screen 1, who took a chance on an unknown quantity that ended up being the surprise hit of the festival.

The sooner you face the fact that not only can you not win, but that it isn't a contest, the more likely you are to stumble upon something revelatory. That moment when the audience collectively realises that it has backed a winner is not to be trumped. Sorry. I forgot. It's not a contest. Better instead to view the whole 16 days as a lucky dip. In that spirit, here are 10 titles about which you will know as much as I do by the time you've finished reading.

Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter

From eight hours of out-takes and rushes, Robert Gitt has cultivated this three-hour compilation of clips promising an insight into how Laughton steered his cast through some of cinema's darkest pastures. All together now: "Left hand and right hand! Hate and Love! Good and Evil! But wait...! Probably best recommended for people who actually liked the film in the first place.

City of God

Festivals are good at promising "the new..." whatever. This Brazilian crime drama spanning three decades is being touted as the new Amores Perros. Amores Perros was the new Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction, you'll remember, was the new Terms of Endearment. Buy your ticket and stop pretending you're above all this hype nonsense.

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

The dreamlike films of Guy Maddin, such as Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, are an acquired taste. No, that's not a euphemism. This is billed as a stylised record of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production of Dracula. Expect some chin-scratching in the foyer afterwards.

The Embalmer

An Italian date movie: your everyday tale of taxidermist-meets-boy, becomes insanely jealous of boy's girlfriend, and goes to extreme lengths to keep her out of the picture.

Ken Park

Director Larry Clark and screenwriter Harmony Korine were talking up this exposé of Californian delinquents (and their equally dysfunctional parents) back when Kids came out. Six years later, Clark and Korine are sworn enemies, with the latter disowning Ken Park in the wake of his own daring directorial experiments. If this is anything like Clark's other films, it will infuriate, titillate and bore in equal measures – though the involvement of cinematographer Ed Lachman (who shot Todd Haynes's upcoming Far From Heaven) as co-director could lift it out of the doldrums.

Love Liza

Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in only two festival films this year, which is lazy by his standards. The word is excellent on both Punch-Drunk Love (the fourth collaboration between Hoffman and director Paul Thomas Anderson) and this melancholy comedy, written by Hoffman's older brother, Gordy, about a widower coming to terms with his wife's suicide.

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A late addition: the second film this year from Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) follows two Afghan refugees as they make the hazardous journey to Britain to seek asylum.

Unknown Pleasures

I fell asleep in Jia Zhangke'sXiao Wu, but don't hold that against it, or me: it ran on a woozy rhythm that worked on the viewer, or at least on this viewer, like a lullaby. Will you be able to stay awake for this acclaimed semi-sequel? Bring a pillow.

Women... Or Children First

Manuel Poirier's follow-up to the beguiling Western reunites him with Sergi Lopez, that one-man kite-mark of international cinema (Lopez also turns up in the opening night film, Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things).

Year of the Devil

Petr Zelenka's twisted, tangled comedy, Buttoners, was one of the Nineties most original films. The fact that the festival programme is unable to synopsise his latest (something to do with folk music, Y-fronts and Killing Joke as far as I can gather) suggests the weirdness continues unabated.

For film times visit www.rlff.com or call the National Film Theatre (0207-928 3232)