The Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF) will break with tradition in 2011 to screen four films before the festival's official opening next week.

The'Curtain Raiser' collection, screening on Tuesday 1 November and Wednesday 2 November, will offer audiences a sneak peek at four highly anticipated titles before the official opening on Thursday 3 November.

These four films are:
Take Shelter by Director Jeff Nichols, described by Variety as 'a hallucinatory thriller' won the Critics' Week Grand Prize and the SACD Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Tabloid by documentary legend Errol Morris which explores the bizarre tale from the 1970s of an American Beauty Queen who allegedly kidnapped her Mormon ex-lover and kept him as a sex slave.

This is Not a Film by visionary Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, created while the director was under house arrest in Tehran and famously smuggled out of the country on a USB stick inside a cake.

Restless by one of Indie's cinemas most esteemed film-makers Gus Van Sant, and featuring Australian talent Mia Wasikoswka (Alice in Wonderland) and Henry Hopper in a playful and fantastical romance described by Screen International as 'a similar combination of eccentricity, melancholy and profundity as Van-Sants 20-year-old cult classic, My Private Idaho.

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