Hurrah! The Raindance Film Festival – the biggest independent film festival in the UK – has announced this year’s official lineup, and there’s no doubt that a few of the choices will spark debate. This year’s selections include 77 features, of which 69 UK Premieres and over 133 shorts. The festival will take place from 29 September to 10 October at its home of Apollo Cinema: Piccadilly Circus for the second year running – which celebrated knockout attendance figures at last year’s festival.

So, what’s the deal? Well, this year Raindance seem to be celebrating all that is controversial – showcasing films with material that’s, well, less than fluffy. Included in the line-up is Srdjan Spasojevic’s horror picture A Serbian Film, which has been widely criticised for scenes involving paedophilia, necrophilia, rape and incest. It was pulled from last month’s FrightFest in response to the extent of the cuts demanded by the British Board of Film Classification. Raindance have gotten away with it by billing the screening as “private”, but that hasn’t stopped some from objecting to the promotion.

Following up this cuddle-fest is LA Zombie, dubbed the world’s first gay zombie porno, which was banned in Australia before it could be shown at the Melbourne international film festival. Also causing waves is documentary Stolen, directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw – this is a highly contentious documentary about human slavery in a United Nations refugee camp. Every festival which has screened the film to date has received legal threats with many dropping the film as a result. Crimety.

And let’s not forget Jackboots On Whitehall; an animation about an alternate WW2 where the nazis seize London (we’ve already seen it and it’s awesome – check it here).

However, the big dogs at Raindance have assured everyone that they haven’t chosen these films for the shock factor:

“It’s important to understand that these films weren’t programmed because people have dubbed them as ‘controversial’,” said Raindance founder Eliot Grove. “In many cases we’ve been following these films throughout the year, and before anybody even mentioned them as causing any supposed offence. We feel audiences have the right to pass their own judgement, and people know exactly what they are seeing. I suppose in some ways you could say we’re very liberal in our selection, but we also need to take a stand in our programming and be independent in the sense of allowing people to judge for themselves. After all, we are [over] 18 years old.”

Read more about the full schedule at the official Raindance site, and start picking your favourites. Our money is currently on gay zombie porno. Art, eh?