Although the Vancouver International Film Festival has been unveiling select titles from this year's lineup over the past few weeks, the full list from their 34^th annual edition was revealed in their full glory online today.

The festival will commence in a romantic key: John Crowley's Irish immigration drama-romance set in New York City in the 1950s, Brooklyn, will kick things off on September 24. It'll end on a country note with Marc Abraham's I Saw the Light, a biopic about country singer-songwriter Hank Williams starring Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, which will close the festival on October 9.

This year, a whopping 355 films will be shown over 16 days, with 238 of them being feature-length selections.

Needless to say, it's always work to go through the entire catalogue and figure out which films to check out or avoid. (Enjoyable work, that is.)

With that in mind, here's a brief rundown of just some of the highlights to take note of to get you started.

Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos from Greece offers The Lobster, starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and Léa Seydoux. In his latest absurdist yarn (set in a dystopian future), single people are sent to a hotel to find a partner within 45 days or be transformed into an animal.

Indian filmmaker Shivaji Lotan Patil's epic 31^st October depicts the riots sparked by Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984.

Spotlight on France includes Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days and Alice Winocour's Disorder. Gender politics are addressed in Philippe Garrel's In the Shadow of Women, about a married man falling for a younger woman, while Stéphane Brizé's The Measure of a Man follows an unemployed mechanic who must renounce his values when he starts working for a major supermarket. 

Also from France is Cannes Palme d'Or winner Dheepan, directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone), which follows a former Tamil fighter who leaves behind war in Sri Lanka but faces a difference kind of violence in Paris.

This year's Dragons and Tigers section boasts some of the most celebrated names in Asian cinema, including China's Jia Zhangke (Mountains May Depart), Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-Hsien (The Assassin, winner of best director at Cannes),  Japan's Kore-eda Hirokazu (Our Little Sister),  and Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cemetery of Splendour).

There'll be a special presentation of A Tale of Three Cities (San cheng ji) by Hong Kong director Mabel Cheung based on the true love story of the parents of martial arts superstar Jackie Chan.

Canadian director Deepa Mehta's Beeba Boys, an Indo-Canadian crime drama set in Vancouver, also will be featured in a gala presentation.  

A special screening of Avi Lewis' This Changes Everything inspired by Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, will feature both Lewis and Klein in attendance.     

Meanwhile, Canadian avant-garde auteur Guy Maddin offers his latest The Forbidden Room, which starts as a how-to guide on taking a bath, and there's also a documentary profile of an over-the-top Surrey deli owner in The Sandwich Nazi by filmmaker Lewis Bennett. 

In the nonfiction category, here's something that will interest UFO enthusiasts: Michael Madsen's The Visit (An Alien Encounter) recreates an alien invasion—based on fact.

In the Altered States section, there's the intriguingly titled AAAAAAAAH! by Brit filmmaker Steve Oram and Deathgasm, a splatterific tale by New Zealand's Jason Lei Howden about metalheads who unleash an unholy being.  

To browse through the sprawling listings, visit the VIFF website.

For help in deciding what to see, stay tuned for the Georgia Straight's news, views, and reviews of this year's VIFF.

Check out this year's film schedule and visit our guide for complete VIFF coverage.