Film festival picks of the week

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, Bristol Two musicians who know all about limelight-stealing leading ladies – Portishead's Adrian Utley and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp – have found a new frontwoman, and she could teach Beth and Alison a thing or two about the definition of "tortured". Maria Falconetti has been dead more than 60 years, but she earned her place in cinema history in Carl Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (pictured). The 1928 silent endures largely thanks to her astoundingly anguished turn as the martyr on trial. To bring it up to date, Utley and Gregory have composed a new score, which they will be premiering with a band that includes a choir and six electric guitarists. Colston Hall, Fri Terracotta Far East Festival, London All the Asian cinema you can shake a chopstick at in just four days. It's a whistle-stop, 15-film tasting menu of the region's specialities: kung fu epics and gangster thrills from Hong Kong and China (Jackie Chan back on home turf in Little Big Soldier, Johnny To's Vengeance); anime and teen craziness from Japan, including Fish Story (pictured), in which a failed punk band saves the world; horror from Thailand (gorefest Meat Grinder spices up the Sweeney Todd formula); and, er patisserie-related sexual politics from Korea in breezy comedy Antique. Prince Charles Cinema, WC2, Thu to 9 May, visit terracottafestival.com Eric Rohmer, London "If you persist in an idea, it seems to me that in the end you secure a following," said Rohmer early on in his career. And that's how it went. Credited as the founding father of the French New Wave, Rohmer is in many ways the least typical film-maker of the movement – certainly the least flashy. Narrative takes a distant second place to character in Rohmer's patient, honest, almost literary dramas, and those characters talk an awful lot – too much for some viewers – but the fact that he was still turning movies out right up to his death in January speaks volumes. Two separate seasons pay tribute to him this month, but there's plenty enough to go around. Some of his 1980s "hits" will be shown at the Barbican – Pauline At The Beach and The Green Ray – while his later works will screen at the Lumière, including his quartet of seasonal tales and his atypical final work, The Romance Of Astrea And Celadon. Barbican Screen, EC2, Sun to 29 May; Ciné Lumière, SW7, 8-20 May Agnès Varda, London If Eric Rohmer was the French New Wave's père , Varda, eight years his junior, is surely its mère – it's just taken longer for the world to realise it. Her 1954 debut La Pointe-Courte is now seen as the first authentic fruit of the movement, and the film's playful experimentation and mix of documentary and drama set the tone for the rest of her career. She's oscillated between fiction (her brilliant Cleo From 5 To 7 gets an extended release) and non-fiction (subjects have included the Black Panthers, Jane Birkin and her late spouse, Jacques Demy), and blurred the boundaries between them to unique effect, as seen in works like The Gleaners And I and 2008's poignant memoir The Beaches Of Agnès. BFI Southbank, SE1, to 31 May