Film: Pick of the london film festival's second week

Gummo

Harmony Korine, the 23-year-old scriptwriter of Larry Clarke's controversial Kids, now directs his first feature, . It's as oddball as American indies get, with dysfunctional teens roaming low-rent Midwest neighbourhoods. Uncomfortably voyeuristic in tone, it leaves the strong sensation that, before he turned to film-making, Korine was the creepy kid who picked the wings off flies.

NFT1, tomorrow, 8.45pm.

Perfect Circle

This is Bosnian director Ademir Kenovic's account of life in Sarajevo during wartime. A feckless poet rediscovers his humanity while caring for a couple of runaway kids after his family flee the besieged city. Perfect Circle, a humane and moving film, provides a welcome corrective to Michael Winterbottom's confused celebrity-fest Welcome to Sarajevo. (See Emma Daly, page 2.)

NFT1, Sunday, 4.15pm.

Funny Games

Michael Haneke's deeply disturbing, confrontational examination of cinema's treatment of violence subjects a bourgeois Austrian family to a domestic onslaught at the hands of a couple of excessively polite psychopaths. While not the masterpiece that some critics are claiming, it's an intensely serious and self-reflexively moral examination of the spectator's collusion with cinematic extremities.

NFT 1, Thursday, 2pm & 6pm.

Western

"I wanted to make a road-movie in Brittany," explains French director Manuel Poirier, whose film follows the fortunes of two accidental travelling companions. Paco (Sergi Lopez) is Spanish, and a Latin lover, while his companion, Nino (Sacha Bourdo), a Russian immigrant, has much less luck with women. This charming comedy traces their friendship over their 10km travels.

Odeon WE1, today, 3.30pm & 9pm.

A Body in the Forest

This gripping and intelligent Spanish thriller by screenwriter Joaquin Jorda has Rossy de Palma as a Civil Guard investigating the death of a young woman. Serpentine plotting, a multi-faceted view of personal identity and the director's eye for the Spanish countryside all make this a buried treasure in the festival.

NFT2, 22 Nov, 4pm & 8.45pm.

Chris Darke