Mary and Max

Australian director Adam Elliot proved that he is one of the best stop-motion animation filmmakers back in 2004 with his short film Harvie Krumpet, for which he received an Oscar, and he also stole the hairs of animation lovers last year with his critically acclaimed Memoir of a Snail. Yet his most beloved film is perhaps 2009's Mary and Max, a genuinely moving story about timeless themes of acceptance, loneliness and friendship.

Melbourne 8-year-old Mary Dinkle is ignored by her parents and bullied at school - she is a real misfit. One day, she randomly picks a name from an American phone book: Max Horovitz. And she sends him a letter. He is a 44-year-old, obese Jewish man with Asperger's - in other words, he too belongs nowhere. That first letter is the beginning of a decades-long friendship between two people who have finally found a soul mate; they accept each other as they are. With the voices of Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman.