The Film: Secrets - both imagined and real - are the driving force for this superb little thriller. Once more, characters named George and Anne confront a nasty situation, though this time it's partly one of their own paranoid making.

It was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes and Haneke won Best Director.

Haneke's View: "It basically develops like a classic thriller. Thrillers always work with fear. You have a cell. Then a letter arrives, a cassette or even a packet with a head in it and it all takes off from there. In the process, you learn a lot of things about the inner world of this cell and its social infrastructure.

"I used this format principally to ask one question: how do we deal with our guilty consciences? 'What we wouldn't do not to lose a thing,' the Algerian-born character Majid says to Georges in a key scene, who thinks Majid is the man threatening him.

"How do you behave when confronted with something that you should actually admit responsibility for? These are the sort of strategies that interest me, talking yourself out of guilt."