This year's 4 th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival produced a programme that even managed to surpass the previous year's impressive line-up. Sometimes repeating films already shown by it's near neighbour the London Film Festival (such as Forty Shades of Blue, Manderlay, The King, U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha) it did manage to secure some impressive premieres, including Syriana, Capote, Transamerica, The Weather Man, Shooting Dogs and Tsotsi.

With the World Cup in mind, and if any theme at all could be drawn from the festival, football featured heavily. No less than seven films had football as their theme, including the delightful home grown Studs and the unusual comedy Eleven Men Out.

Dublin turned out in force for daytime and evening showings at the 10-day event (from 17-26 February) held at cinemas around Dublin city centre. The guest list was huge and Hollywood celebs making for the red carpet included Cillian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, Julie Walters, Richard Jobson, Ralph Fiennes, Rebecca Miller and Daniel Day-Lewis.

The opening night premiere was host, as usual, to an Irish film, this year the Brendan Gleeson vehicle Studs, about an amateur Dublin soccer team. The film's director Paul Mercier is a well-known theatre producer in Dublin and attended the screening along with almost the entire cast, riotously received by a packed theatre whose applause nearly bought the house down. Only the Pope would have got a more uproarious reception than Brendan Gleeson.

Daniel Day-Lewis and wife Rebecca Miller travelled up from their home in Wicklow for the closing night gala showing of Miller's film The Ballad of Jack and Rose starring Day-Lewis about a close relationship between a dying father and his daughter.

As ever, Irish films were a core commitment of the festival including a crop of ten Irish Film Board shorts, Studs, Mark Hammond's Johnny Was starring Vinnie Jones, Anthony Byrne's modern musical Short Order, Patrick Jolley's experimental New York drama Sugar , and Billy O'Brien's unsettling Isolation starring Breakfast on Pluto's Ruth Negga.

The weighty documentary programme included Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Wal Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price and New York Doll. Canada 's 3 Needles, South Africa 's Oscar winning Tsotsi, Palestine 's Golden Globe winner Paradise Now, and France 's Time To Leave were some of the World Cinema offerings. An excellent set of films made up the American Independents season, including The Matador with Pierce Brosnan, Steven Soderberg's Bubble, Harsh Times with Christian Bale, David Mamet's Edmond with William H Macy, mockumentary CSA: The Confederate States Of America, and Ask the Dust with Colin Farrell.

Whilst evening galas were generally sold out ahead of time, it's relatively easy to get tickets for daytime and weekday shows. Long queues for tickets on the night and good turnout for daytime screenings are testament to the festival's popularity and the excellent programme put together by Irish Times film critic and movie guru Michael Dwyer. Whilst last year's highlights were probably 9 Songs, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Downfall, Primer, Tarnation, and The Woodsman, the selection this year was even more compelling and challenging, and signals the Irish capital's encouraging commitment to showcase world class films.

JDIFF 2006 Selection

Adam's Apples

Taking the age old story of good versus evil, Adam's Apples is a wry look at one man's attempts to break the spirit of another. Far from being a truly dark study of hatred, the film contains such offhand humour that its most disturbing points have a surreal comic quality. By taking an unpalatable subject (Nazism) and poking fun at it, director Anders Thomas Jensen reduces bigotry of any kind to a farce. Neo-Nazi Adam is sent to do community service with smiling priest Ivan at Ivan's picturesque village church. Adam becomes obsessed with Ivan's inability to see bad in anyone or any situation. Discovering horrible things about Ivan's past, Adam sets out to destroy him. In the meantime Ivan has insisted Adam bake a pie using apples from a tree in the church grounds.

Edmond

Based on the stage play by David Mamet, who also wrote the screenplay, Edmond is an examination of what happens when a confused and damaged individual stops conforming to the rules of his class and acts on his base instincts. Edmond Burke is a regular guy, bound by a life of playing by the rules and respecting his fellow man. One day he decides to leave his wife and search for his true self in New York 's sleezy underbelly, in a naïve quest for sex and truth. The further he gets pulled into the bowls of the city the more his civilised veneer slips, until an act of extreme violence reduces him to a life of uniformity he could never have imagined.

Eleven Men Out

Like Icelandic director Róbert I Douglas' other films, this comedy also specialises in satirising small town heroics � with an unusual twist. Tired of the same old reporters sniffing around for non-stories, soccer star Ottar Thor decides to deliver a real headline and announce he is gay. This is also how his wife, son and the rest of his family find out and the film is about their struggle to come to terms with Ottar's sexuality. Ottar meanwhile joins a team of gay footballers whose numbers swell with recruitments from the gay community. The only trouble is other teams don't want to play them, Ottar's son Magnus won't speak to him and wife Gugga has checked into rehab.

Harsh Times

SWAT, Training Day, Fast & Furious and U-571 writer David Ayer makes his directorial debut with Harsh Times which he also produced with lead actor Christian Bale. Covering similar territory to his other films, Ayer moves up a level to examine the male psyche with a project he himself said couldn't have been made by a big studio. Jim David (Bale) is an ex-US soldier, haunted by nightmares of desert battles and damaged by his war experiences. Most at peace with his girlfriend in Mexico , he has promised to find work in Los Angeles and marry her. Looking for a job with best friend Mike Alvarez, Jim gets offered a job by the Homeland Security department who overlook his off the wall behaviour. Determined to enjoy his last few days of freedom, Jim takes Mike on a violent spree fuelled by drink and drugs that threatens to destroy them both.

Liberated Zone

This light-hearted East German comedy takes football as the basis of its examination of post-communist life in a small town struggling in the shadow of the more prosperous West Germany . The unassuming town of Sässlan gets a wake-up call when a well known footballer joins their local team and helps them climb to the top of the league. The new recruit's superstar status is hampered by his ethnicity � he's a West German of African descent. Sylvia helps him adjust to his new life, and they begin an affair when she discovers her fiancé is cheating on her with her best friend. Sässlen folk drink, have sex, cheat on their spouses and go mad for their football team � but unlike many other small European towns it is also emerging from a repressive regime and still getting used to the freedoms of its liberated status.

Paradise Now

Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee, Paradise Now is the gripping story of the few hours leading up to an operation by two Palestinian suicide bombers. Khaled and Saïd pass their time working as mechanics. One day Saïd is approached by a friend who asks him to carry out a mission for a covert organisation. As childhood friends Khaled and Saïd agree to do the job together, and so begins the countdown to what should be the last hours of their lives. After delivering their suicide video message and being strapped with explosives, they cross the Israeli border but get separated. A friend sews doubts into Khaled's mind about the effectiveness of their methods, but Saïd's conviction remains resolute with devastating consequences.

Studs

Brendan Gleeson heads an all-Irish cast in this film based on director Paul Mercier's play of the same name. An amateur Dublin soccer team's fortunes are turned around by a mystery man who offers to be their manager. The laughing stock of the league, they soon find themselves moving to the top. However, their new manager is more than reserved about his private life and the team's captain decides to find out if he's who he says he is. A wry and comic look at a group of anti-Beckhams and Ronaldos, Studs is a heartening study of ordinary men offered hope and glory by a visionary stranger.