THIS year's Singapore International Festival showcases 14 movies made by home-grown talents including two works with gay content which could prove to be controversial.

Women Who Love Women: Conversations In Singapore is touted as one of the few documentaries ever made about lesbians here. In it, three Singapore lesbians talk candidly about their lives and loves.

Lucky7 is an experimental film with seven directors at the helm. One director does a 10- to 12-minute segment of the film and this is continued by the next director who knows only what has happened in the last minute of the previous segment.

The movie's central character is played by by Sunny Pang. It has homosexual content and has been rated R21 for 'sexual content and disturbing images'.

Festival director Philip Cheah said Women Who Love Women was submitted to the censors on Jan 10 and is pending a rating.

He said: 'All the films are like our children, we want to see them all through the process.''

The festival has a policy of showing films uncut. Last year, Kan Lume's experimental film about a gay couple, Solos, was withdrawn from the festival after the censors ordered three cuts.

Other films that were withdrawn after the censors wanted cuts included Sam Loh's serial killer thriller Outsiders (2005) and Zai Kuning's short film Even Dogs Have Choices (2005), a short film featuring local singer X' Ho.

Women Who Love Women, directed by Lim Mayling, 28, an events manager, was screened at the Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival last November. It has also been screened privately in Singapore.

The three lesbians are Amanda Lee, 24, an undergraduate at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia; Sabrina Renee Chong, 40, a photographer; and Gea Swee Jean, 24, who works in business and IT marketing.

When asked how the audience would react to the documentary, Lim said: 'We will leave it to the audience to have their own thoughts. It is still a little surreal to have been selected for the festival. It remains to be seen if the film will be screened or how it will be rated.''

Other Singapore works to look out for include Royston Tan's After The Rain, a short film about a young lad's move from the countryside to the city, and Tan Siok Siok's Boomtown Beijing, a documentary on the impact of the upcoming Olympics Games on a group of Beijing residents.

Royston is one of Singapore's most well-known directors, whose last film, 881, about getai singers, made about $3.5 million at the box office. Siok Siok is a long-time television producer who has worked with Discovery Channel and MediaCorp TV. Boomtown Beijing is her debut film, which she made while lecturing at Beijing Film Academy.

Festival manager Yuni Hadi said of the Singapore film segment: 'Whatever pre-conception we have of what a 'Singapore film' is, should be left at the door and be challenged, twisted, questioned and discussed.'

The festival's opening film on April 4 is Wayne Wang's The Princess Of Nebraska, a story about a pregnant Chinese girl's life in the United States. Wang, who made his name with The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Eat A Bowl Of Tea (1989), will be here for the festival.

Other films to watch out for include Wang Quanan's Tuya's Marriage, which won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year. It tells the heartbreaking story of a Mongolian woman who tries to find a suitor to take care of her and her disabled husband.

Ticket sales at Sistic outlets start from March 5. For ticketing details and programme information, visit www.filmfest.org.sg

The Siff venues are Lido cineplex at Orchard Road, National Museum of Singapore, The Substation, Goethe Institute, Republic Polytechnic and Sinema@Old School.