Locarno's Critics Week sidebar will present four world premieres and three international premieres in this year's programme of creative documentaries.

The complete lineup of seven titles is:

Apology Of An Economic Hitman, dir: Stelios Koul (Greece), international premiere

Bill - Das Absolute Augenmass, dir: Eric Schmid (Switzerland), world premiere

Four Wives - One Man, dir: Nahid Persson (Iran/Sweden), international premiere

Kites, dir: Beata Dzianowicz (Poland), international premiere

Mr December - Nobody's Perfect, dir: Niko von Glasow (Germany), world premiere

No More Smoke Signals, dir: Fanny Bräuning (Switzerland), world premiere

The Royal Road Of Cachaca (Estrada Real Da Cachaca), dir: Pedro Urano (Brazil), world premiere

The world premieres include Fanny Bräuning's No More Smoke Signals about Pine Ridge, the reservation of the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota, which will be distributed in Switzerland by Columbus Film; Eric Schmid's portrait of the Swiss politician-designer-architect-artist Max Bill (world sales: Accent Films International); and Niko von Glasow's honest, humorous and searching look in Mr December - Nobody's Perfect at how thalodomide has affected the way he is perceived by the public and by himself. In the film, von Glasow asks a number of thalidomide victims to join him in posing nude for an exhibition of giant-sized photographs.

The international premieres meanwhile range from Stelios Koul's political-doc-thriller Apology Of An Economic Hitman (world sales: Deckert Distribution) to Polish filmmaker Beata Dzianowicz's Kites following a group of young Afghans in Kabul participating in a film course led by a Polish documentary director.

The sidebar has been organised independently by Switzerland's national association of film journalists since 1990, in close operation with the Locarno Film Festival, with the aim of provoking debate and opening up new perspectives of awareness and approach. Over 100 films have been shown in the past 18 years including works by Erroll Morris, Richard Dindo, Nicholas Philibert and Thomas Riedelsheimer.

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