This year, the UN has recorded 130 armed conflicts around the world, which is the highest number of conflicts since the end of the Second World War. And for the first time ever, military spending is outstripping social spending. It’s a deeply sobering state of affairs that lends even greater urgency to the 14th edition of War on Screen (running 5 - 11 October), which is the only international festival where filmmakers examine conflicts through the illuminating prism of their cameras.

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The event will welcome Swedish filmmaker Tarik Saleh as guest of honour; he will deliver a masterclass on 8 October, and the three films in his Egyptian trilogy (The Nile Hilton Incident, Boy from Heaven and Eagles of the Republic) are also set to be screened. The festival will open and close, respectively, with Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam’s Le Faux Soir (a movie unveiled in Toronto which has just closed San Sebastián) and fellow Belgian Lukas Dhont’s Coward (which won Cannes’ Best Actor Award).

10 feature films will be battling it out in competition, of which seven are fiction titles. Among them are three films unveiled in Cannes: the Golden Camera victor Ben’imana by Rwanda’s Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, Congo Boy by Congo’s Rafiki Fariala (awarded the Un Certain Regard line-up’s Best Actor trophy) and The Station by British-Yemeni director Sara Ishaq (discovered in Critics’ Week). Two Berlinale titles backed by Europe are also in the mix, in the form of No Good Men by Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat and Roya by Iranian Mahnaz Mohammadi, not to mention two films presented last year: Cuerpo Celeste by Chilean Nayra Ilic García (awarded a Special Mention in Tribeca) and Before the Bright Day by Taiwan’s Tsao Shih-han (screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors section).

Three documentaries are also in the running: Rehearsals for a Revolution by Iranian Pegah Ahangarani (which won the Golden Eye on the Croisette), A Life, A Manifesto by France’s Jean-Gabriel Périot (likewise unveiled in Cannes) and The Other Side of the Sun by Belgian-Syrian director Tawfik Sabouni (which took its first bow in the Berlinale’s Panorama line-up).

The Perspectives section stands out with a wealth of Cannes gems, including the Grand-Prize-winning Minotaur by Russia’s Andreï Zviaguintsev, the joint winners of Best Director - Fatherland by Poland’s Paweł Pawlikowski and La Bola Negra by Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi – and French director Emmanuel Marre’s Best Screenplay champion A Man of his Time, to name just a few.

The remainder of the extensive line-up notably includes three Focus strands: "Submarines and War: Aesthetics of a Microcosm", "Taiwan: A Troubled Identity Shaped in Imperialism" and the 5th chapter of the Focus, "Natural Environment, Paradoxes and Emergencies", this time dedicated to animal rights. Likewise on the agenda are the "Shared Memories" section (featuring French filmmaker Laurent Véray’s documentary, Haute solitude, among other works), conferences, round tables, a short-film competition, and a "Young Audiences" programme.

Finally, for the very first time, three days of industry meetings are set to unfold (between 8 and 10 October, including pitches, speed meetings, etc.), while the 8th edition of WoS Fabrique will support 10 projects led by young filmmakers and producers from various European schools (including La Fémis, UNATC in Bucharest, ECAL, the Łódź Film School and ECAM in Madrid).