How to Use Your 2014 Sydney Film Festival Flexipass

The best movies of the 2014 Sydney Film Festival are just a month and some strategic ticket booking away. All those hotly awaited preview screenings and festival circuit favourites are vying for our attention. But after years of festival attendance, if we've learned anything, we've learned that a good film festival is all about balance, variety and the payoff of open-mindedness.

So here's our guide to creating a great festival program for yourself — including the best, ballsiest and most challenging films — using the festival's most popular ticket, the Flexipass 10. Of course, if you find yourself getting a Flexipass 20 or 30, we've got you covered too.

One likely Competition winner

With his last film, David Michôd gave the world the most sinister Smurf ever, and in return got awards from the Academy, Golden Globes and Sundance. Since Animal Kingdom, Michôd has been working on The Rover, conceived with Joel Edgerton and set in a near-future, dystopian Australia where the western economy has collapsed and people from all over the world come to work in the mines (a la gold rush). Guy Pearce is in the grizzled lead role, with Robert Pattinson as his annoying protege (really). So no rainbows and unicorns in the Michôd oeuvre anytime soon.

Alternatively: It's a tough field in the Sydney Film Festival Official Competition, which will see one filmmaker awarded the $60,000 prize by the expert jury. The latest risky feature from Hail director Amiel Courtin-Wilson (this time co-directing with Michael Cody), Ruin is a love story set among the violence and desperation of Cambodia's underclass.

One ambitious formal experiment

Did you know that for the last 12 years, Richard Linklater has been tinkering away on the same project? Oh yes, in between Before Midnight and Before Sunset, A Scanner Darkly and Bernie, there's been Boyhood, an intimate coming-of-age drama utilising the same cast (Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and kids Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater) and interested in the kind of authenticity that can be created when you're not artificially ageing or swapping in older actors. "There has simply never been anything like this film," wrote Rolling Stone, and it does look very exciting indeed.

Alternatively: There's some fantastic formal experimentation taking place this year. Check out The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her and Him, two separate films detailing two different halves of a relationship breakdown; the single-shot, 134-minute Iranian slasher film Fish & Cat; Locke, which takes place entirely inside a car; or Manakamana, which takes place entirely inside a cable car.

One advanced preview you can't wait to see

Michael Fassbender in a papier mache head. Does it seem like director Lenny Abrahamson might have shot himself in the foot there? Fassbender is obscured by mask for basically the whole of Frank, the sweet, Jon Ronson-penned feature about genius, illness and selling out in the music industry, which we've been buzzing about since it premiered at Sundance. The SFF is scattered with films like this in the special presentation stream — they're basically guaranteed to come out in cinemas in the next few months, but this is your chance to see them at the luxe State Theatre (and before your friends).

Alternatively: Also at the State are the Michel Gondry/Noam Chomsky film Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, sure to be a work of great joy, as well as the long-awaited (by some) sophomore effort from Zach Braff, Wish I Was Here. Not at the State, Gia Coppola makes her directorial debut with Palo Alto, the film that James Franco may have sexted a teenager for.

One foreign-language film to challenge you

Prepare to feel like you've accomplished nothing with your life. At the age of just 25, director Xavier Dolan has been hailed as a genius more times than most of us have been told that we're just pretty okay. This French-Canadian triple-threat won the SFF Prize in 2010 for his sophomore film Heartbeats, and now returns with Tom at the Farm, a psychological thriller about a man — named Tom (Dolan) — who attends the funeral of his boyfriend, only to find himself caught in a twisted game with members of his dead lovers' family.

Alternatively: Diao Yinan's neo-noir Black Coal, Thin Ice took the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and looks to be amongst the most intriguing entries in the festival sidebar focused on China. Meanwhile, the Angelina Jolie-produced child abduction drama Difret appears grimly well-timed in light of the Boko Haram kidnappings currently making headlines around the world, and transgender filmmaker Ester Martin Bergsmark takes a look at young love in Something Must Break.

The latest from one of your favourite cult directors

Brilliant South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (Mother, The Host) makes his English language debut with Snowpiercer, a highly politicised post-apocalyptic thriller. When a botched attempt to solve global warming plunges the earth into a second ice age, the last remnants remains of humanity — including Chris Evans, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton — take shelter aboard a perpetually moving train. After rave early screenings on the European festival circuit, American distributor Harvey 'Scissorhands' Weinstein caused controversy by suggesting he planned to cut out 20 minutes from the film so that American audiences would be able to understand it. Thankfully, it appears that the film will screen uncut at SFF, just as Bong intended.

Alternatively: David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche) teams up with Nicholas Cage for the Mississippi-set drama Joe, while Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) ventures into the third dimension with quirk-filled The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. There are also new films from Atom Egoyan, Kelly Reichardt and The Dardennes.

One eye-opening documentary

Maybe you've thought that Ukraine's topless protesters FEMEN are a pretty crap version of feminism. Maybe you just don't know enough about Ukraine to judge. Australian director Kitty Green's Ukraine Is Not a Brothel takes a keen-eyed look at the politics, society and personal stories surrounding the group — and their shadowy mastermind. Plus, let's face it, you could probably use a primer on Ukraine considering how central it's become to geopolitics.

Alternatively: The Australian and international documentary streams are full of stranger-than-fiction stories told in interesting, rigorous ways. We love the look of Gracie Otto's vivacious The Last Impresario; Errol Morris's latest, The Unknown Known; and the rollicking tale of the most influential sci-fi film never made, Jodorowsky's Dune.

One exceedingly weird thing that will never get a mainstream release

There's no point in going to a film festival if you're only going to see movies that'll be released at the multiplex next week. Being a movie buff means liking weird things with absolutely no commercial prospects — like Ne me quitte pas, a Belgian documentary about two drunken old men hanging out together in the woods. Described by Indiewire as both hilarious and touching, you'll never know how great (or terrible) a movie like this is unless you're willing to give it a chance.

Alternatively: A father and son provide running commentary on grainy footage from a 1988 Romanian soccer match in The Second Game, while another match gets interrupted by zombies in Goal of the Dead.

One visual trip through music

This year's opening film is none other than 20,000 Days on Earth, a fictionalised documentary portrayal (huh?) of a day in the life of Nick Cave. The film won a pair of awards Sundance for directing and editing, and shows the iconoclastic musician visit the psychotherapist, work on his latest album, and have imaginary conversations with figures from his past. Sounds strange, which should suit fans of Cave's music just fine.

Alternatively: The festival's Sounds on Screen section has been popular feature with music lovers for quite some time now. This year's highlights include a Jimi Hendrix biopic starring André 3000 and a doco about Australian jazz pioneer Clark Terry and his friendship with a blind young pianist, Keep on Keepin' On.

One comedy that lightens the mood

Look, if you only saw the critically talked-up stuff at the SFF, you'd probably find yourself gravely depressed. The stuff of reviewer reverence is rarely uplifting; it's usually important, unsentimental and keen to deny you the closure of a neat ending. We know it. That's why it's vital you heed this step and add a comedy to your schedule, just to keep you in your right mind. The must-see this year is really What We Do In the Shadows, the NZ vampire mockumentary from the makers of Flight of the Conchords. Enough said.

Alternatively: The creator of web series The Slope, Desiree Akhavan, has produced the "queer Persian-American Annie Hall", Appropriate Behaviour, while Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey and Lena Dunham all hang out in Happy Christmas, from director Joe Swanberg.

One unforgettable film experience

Ultimately, film festivals are about creating experiences that stick with you after the lights come up. To that end, take a trip to the Skyline Drive-In on Friday the 13th, for a late-night screening of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Never will the growl of the rusty saw sound so close, nor the blood look less fake, than in this carefully restored digital print. Forty years on, it's a classic for a reason. Be sure to lock your doors.

Alternatively: Check out the always awesome SFF Hub for a ton of extra-curricular activities. Grab a drink, listen to a panel, take part in the Vladmaster Viewmaster experience or watch Australian critics duke it out in the take-no-prisoners Film Critics Death Match.

By Rima Sabina Aouf and Tom Clift.