Never meet your heroes, they say. Czech filmmaker Jana Hojdová finds out the hard way in this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life and work of hilariously gruff cinematographer Robert Richardson. Feared and revered in equal measure, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino pay homage to his mercurial genius.

One of the most flabbergasting documentaries you’ll see all year, Andrew Neel’s Tribeca-premiering delicacy, cooked up from Witold Szablowski’s book, confronts the personal chefs of the world’s worst dictators about their complicity. The genocidal actions of their bosses left countless souls brutally murdered while they luxuriated in mansions.

As women fight for their independence in Iran, the plastic surgery business is simultaneously booming in the nation’s capital, a place whose very architecture is likewise torn down and rebuilt on repeat. Afsaneh Salari’s tender, unjudgmental documentary, heading straight to Adelaide from Toronto International Film Festival, asks what lies behind this social phenomenon.

Filmed across a decade, this evolving self-portrait captures gender transition from the inside out, tracing a radical transformation from hyperfemininity towards defiant masculinity while confronting the forces of class, privilege and patriarchy within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle-class society.