"We decided to give the carte blanche this year to a director who is perhaps a little less well-known because he has such an interesting personality and an outspokenness that is increasingly rare in cinema," explains Emmanuel Gaspart, Écran Total programmer. "We really liked his frankness and accessibility, and that's apparent in his choice of films."

Nossiter's theme is freedom of expression, and he has chosen seven films from the past 50 years which are nothing if not unrestrained. He admits in his programme notes that there is little else to connect them. "So much the better," he writes, "because if exercising freedom of expression is the most noble act of resistance at any given moment in history, it is because it is intrinsically without codes and restrictions."

Quite of few of the films experienced problems when first released, although for different reasons. Pier Paolo Pasolini's Saló (1975) touched nerves by setting the Marquis de Sade's catalogue of debauchery, The 120 Days of Sodom, among a group of Mussolini's fascists. People not offended by the explicit sex were sure to take exception to the politics. A different taboo was explored in Marcel Ophüls' Le Chagrin et la pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity, 1969), which cut very close to the bone in its account of French collaboration during the Second World War.

A more joyous freedom of expression can be found in Touki Bouki (1973) by Djibril Diop Mambety, a sort of African Easy Rider that celebrates youthful rebellion and experiments with sounds and images (pictured). Nossiter will introduce the film in person on 2 July.

Also on the programme are Max Ophüls' lush historical drama Lola Montès (1955), Jean-Marie Teno's witty critique of colonialism Afrique, je te plumerai... (1993) and Juzo Itami's comic combination of Japanese gangsters and noodles Tampopo (1985). Finally, the most obscure choice is Kira Muratova's The Asthenic Syndrome (1989), a challenging catalogue of social maladies from the age of glasnost. Other highlights of Écran Total include a John Cassavetes retrospective, from his directing debut Shadows (1959) through to landmarks such as A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). The great French cinema essayist Chris Marker also gets a brief tribute, and there's an eclectic selection of films dealing with psychiatric institutions, from Frederic Wiseman's documentary Titicut Follies (1967) to Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

Finally, there are programmes devoted to movie classics, to new films without distribution in Belgium and to recent releases that the Arenberg thinks deserve another chance.

Until 14 September
Cinéma Arenberg
Koninginnegalerij 26
Brussels
www.arenberg.be