Run Lola Run

Your boyfriend's facing death in 20 minutes because you've stopped for a pack of cigarettes. You need to find 100,000 marks, and time is something you certainly don't have. If you're Lola, the only thing you can do is keep running.

Director Tom Twyker has taken the central image of a flame-haired girl running and woven a tapestry of chance encounters with odd characters around it. Using a dazzling variety of visual techniques - animation, shooting on film and video - Twyker blurs the line between what is reality, and what might become reality.

Even the tiniest of decisions become life-altering not just for Lola, but for the people she bumps into: all seen through photographic flash forwards. And we care because, as the film progresses and Lola's attempts to find the money become increasingly desperate, it's difficult not to empathise with her plight (thanks to an endearing - and athletic - performance by Franka Potente in the lead role).

Run Lola Run is the kind of energetic, thrill-seeking movie that you don't expect from a German filmmaker. Like a sexy version of Sliding Doors, or perhaps a Groundhog Day for the next century, it works both on a technical level and as sheer entertainment.