Rio Film Festival back with a bang

The Rio Film Festival returns at the end of the month and features around 400 films to be shown at a wide variety of locations including the beach.

Now in its 24th year, the Brazilian festival has offerings from 60 different countries and directors such as Steven Soderbergh, Stephen Frears and Francis Ford Coppola.

In addition, more than 70 films from Brazil will be screened. These include Gonzaga, the opening night screening about the Brazilian music star Luis Gonzaga. This year the festival runs for two weeks from Thursday 27 September to Thursday 11 October.

The wide range of venues is perhaps the festival's biggest attraction. As well as regular cinema theatres, films will also be shown in squares, beaches and even in the hillside 'favelas', the term for Brazil's shanty towns.

Among the guests expected to grace the festival's red carpets are the directors of Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris, and the British actor Jeremy Irons. The Serbian artist Marina Abramovic is also expected to attend a screening of a documentary about her work.