Director and subject matter make for a perfect marriage in Tim Burton's version of the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice In Wonderland (PG), opening at Wells Film Centre this week.

It stars frequent Burton collaborator Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Defiance's Mia Wasikowska as Alice, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.

In this version, 19-year-old Alice returns to the magical world of her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends and learns of her true destiny: to end the Red Queen's reign of terror.

Based on the best selling book by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (12A), also opening at Wells this week, is the story of a 14-year-old girl from suburban Pennsylvania who is murdered by her neighbour.

She tells the story from Heaven, showing the lives of the people around her and how they have changed all while attempting to get someone to find her lost body.

Portraits of two very different societies can be seen at Strode Theatre in Street this week.

The Search For Shangri-La is a collection of archive films of life in Tibet before the Chinese invasion, showing on Saturday at 7.30pm with an introduction by British Film Institute archivist Jan Faull.

Starting with the oldest cinematic record of Tibet, an extract from the 1922 Everest expedition film by Captain J B Noel, the programme includes a fascinating selection of scenes from rural life, ceremonial occasions (including the installation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama), diplomatic parties, and travel films, taken up to the mid-1940s by the select band of (mostly British) explorers, travellers and government representatives who had permission to enter this (then) closed and secretive country. This programme has no official BBFC classification, but is likely to be suitable for all ages.

In contrast to this vibrant array of historical real life comes director Michael Haneke's dark fictional vision of pre-World War I Germany in The White Ribbon (15), showing at Strode on Monday at 7.30pm in the original German with subtitles. A young school teacher in rural Northern Germany witnesses his sober, orderly, protestant village being rattled by a series of mysterious tragedies.

There seem to be unfortunate accidents, like a farmer's wife falling through a rotten barn floor, but soon it is clear that there is a malicious power at work, when the doctor's horse is tripped by a wire, the local baron's son abducted and a parrot murdered.

The pastor thinks that applying white purity ribbons to his children's arms will protect them – but no-one seems exempt from the vile "punishments". And what is happening to the village children?