Free admission will give you the opportunity to see three first-rate films at the Japanese Film Festival, which begins at the Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College, 12 Winchester Street, Merivale, on Wednesday, March 15.

Justin James, who moved to Christchurch from Kerala in India in 2008, and works as the Supply Chain Manager at Wimpex Ltd, is now one of the hottest property in the music business of India's regional Malayalam film industry. This after, 4 Musics - the music composing team of James and his three childhood friends - won the award for best music direction of 2016 for the regional movie Oppam on January 20, 2017. James, and his friends, are now working on four more confirmed projects, with many more in the pipeline.

French is considered the language of love, and there is plenty of that among the more than 30 movies being screened at the 18-day Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, which starts at Hoyts Northlands on March 9. And one much-loved French actress is Catherine Deneuve, who will be featured in two films this year. They are a re-screening of the legendary 1964 musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and a much more recent release, Standing Tall, in which Deneuve plays a youth-court magistrate who becomes a foster mother of a troubled teenager.

The ten-day-long Lyttelton Harbour Festival of Lights, which started on June 18, concluded this past Monday, with highlight being the Street Party on June 24.