Sundance and Cannes favourites, Gael Garcia Bernal and a Japanese love story among this year’s cinematic offerings.

Australian cinephiles have had a string of events to choose from of late, including the Alliance Française French Film Festival last month and the 10th Festival of German Films running throughout April. Having feasted on croissants and strudel, viewers can gear up for June’s Sydney Film Festival, which yesterday announced the first 23 films in its 2011 lineup.

Now in its 58th year and with a competition component introduced in 2008, the festival continues to go from strength to strength. The “Unleashed” canine campaign that dominated the past two years has been sent away with its tail between its legs in favour of the hot-topic Green Cinema agenda, one of eight genre categories.

The 2011 season had already made headlines in February when it was revealed that the programme will feature Scenario, a three-dimensional interactive piece based on the controversial and harrowing Fritzl case, in which an Austrian man locked his daughter in a secret room and fathered seven children with her.

Three of the twelve Official Competition films have been announced, all making their Australian debuts at the festival. Of these, booklovers will be...