The line-up of around 125 features and nearly 280 shorts at this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF) takes in everything from high profile US and international awards contenders to niche documentaries about cooking, architecture and sport.

In what co-founder and CEO Gregg Schwenk describes as “an especially strong year for awards contenders,” the festival, whose eight-day run (October 15-22) comes at the height of awards season, screens a slew of Oscar and Bafta hopefuls.

US and UK contenders in the line-up include Martin McDonough’s CIA comedy Wild Horse Nine, James Gray’s dramatic thriller Paper Tiger (to be introduced at the festival by the film’s Miles Teller), Danny Boyle’s tabloid tale Ink (with star Jack O’Connell in a post-screening Q&A) and, on the festival’s closing night, with its director in attendance, Tony Gilroy’s music-themed drama Behemoth!.

Also getting exposure at the festival are David Greaves’ documentary contender Once Upon A Time In Harlem, Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated In Waves and a quartet of submissions for the best international film Oscar: Spain’s Cannes prize-winner La Bola Negra, directed by Los Javis; Andrey Zvyagintsev’s French entry Minatour, which won the Cannes Grand Prix; Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, another Cannes prize-winner, from Poland; and, submitted by Luxembourg, Cyrus Neshvad’s Child.

Beyond its award contenders, the Newport Beach festival will give more than 20 films their world premieres and more than a dozen their first North American outings.

The global debutants include British psychological thriller Better, from director Daniel Sharp, Vicky Wight’s Irish drama The Body Is Water, US nineties punk scene story …And Out Comes The Wolf, directed by Danny Peykoff, and Lisa Downs and Ashley Pugh’s UK-produced documentary As Far Back As I Can Remember…The Story Of GoodFellas.

Making their North American debuts, meanwhile, are features including Sophie Heldman’s Berlin festival entry The Education Of Jane Cumming, Richard Hawkins’ British World War II drama Think Of England and Lance Daly’s Irish music comedy Trad.

The selection of international films at Newport Beach has expanded since the festival was launched, as a spring event, in 1999.

“There was always a strong international component,” says Schwenk, “but over 27 years it has grown to reflect our relationship with our audience as well as the creatives producing the films.”

This year, in addition to the non-US films in other strands, the event’s international spotlight section offers 17 films from 15 different countries. Venice festival entry Look Back, from Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda, gets its North American premiere in the section, as does Royd Tolkien, Drew Cullingham and Robert Kavanah’s documentary There’s A Whole In My Bucket, marking a first ever spotlight for New Zealand. La Bola Negra and Fatherland represent their respective countries in the section and other entries come from Italy, Sweden, France, Iran and Mexico.

Three films in the section - Dallan Shovlin’s Christmas crime comedy You’ll Never Believe Who’s Dead along with The Body Is Water and Trad - reaffirm the festival’s close ties with Ireland, which has a number of other features and shorts elsewhere in the line-up and which is sending a delegation of close to 20 filmmakers to Newport Beach.

The Irish presence at the festival “has grown exponentially over time,” Schwenk reports. “We are probably the largest collection of Irish films in North America.”

Newport Beach’s line-up is also significant for its diversity, with the festival offering sections focusing on action sports, art, architecture and design, environmental films, culinary films and music, among other topics.

Notable entries in those sections this year include, in music, Rob Arthur’s documentary Frampton, with musician Peter Frampton in attendance for the festival’s opening night screening, and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s Broken English, a documentary about rock icon Marianne Faithfull.

The action sports section has the North American premiere of Australian surfing documentary Stern Fever, while the culinary section includes the US premiere of Spanish restaurant documentary Noor: Eating History.

The festival’s diverse verticals have been the natural result of audience interest in individual films on specific subjects, explains Schwenk.

“We would play one film [on a subject] and it would sell out,” says the festival CEO, “and then play two and they would both sell out. So we realised there was a desire in Southern California for these types of films, and that we could tap into something that’s been neglected by other festivals.”

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