Some of the hottest tickets at TIFF each year are for films that have already secured a commercial release date in Japan. For all the high-minded talk about artistry and creativity, most viewers just want to see the big movies before everyone else. But spare a thought for the less commercial offerings on the lineup. These rare orchids and oddities are unlikely ever to see the inside of a multiplex and are worth catching on what might be their only cinematic outing in Japan.

BalikBayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III.5 (Working Title, 1979-2015)

Filipino iconoclast Kidlat Tahimik spent more than three decades toting a showreel for his unfinished film about Enrique of Malacca, the Asian slave who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan on his 16th-century East Indies expedition and is believed by some to have been the first person to circumnavigate the globe. Now Tahimik has finished the project — well, sort of — by interweaving the original footage with new and old material, creating a revisionist-historical epic that doubles as a commentary on itself. Chaotic and deeply original, it won the Caligari Film Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The most peculiar offering at TIFF.

Family Film (Rodinny Film)

With his sophomore feature, 30-year-old Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu ("A Night Too Young") looks poised to join Michael Haneke and Ruben Ostlund as one of European cinema's premier dissectors of human frailty. The ironically titled "Family Film" charts the decline of a seemingly perfect middle-class clan after the parents go on holiday, leaving their teenage kids at home. The movie earned some positive reviews at San Sebastian International Film Festival last month, not least for an inspired final act that shifts the focus to the family's dog, Otto.

7 Days (Nanoka)

Sibling filmmakers Hirobumi and Yuji Watanabe caused a minor stir at TIFF in 2013 with their debut feature, "Soshite Dorobune wa Yuku" ("And the Mud Ship Sails Away"), a droll, cheaply produced comedy set in the drab countryside of Tochigi Prefecture. For the follow-up, they head back to the rural hinterlands, shooting once again in stark monochrome, but this time they've done away with dialogue altogether. Director Hirobumi stars as a cow farmer going about his daily routine, and fans of the brothers' previous film will be pleased to hear that their scene-stealing grandmother, Misao Hirayama, is back too.

Tangerine

There's low-budget filmmaking, and then there's the no-budget approach taken by Sean Baker in "Tangerine." This lurid comedy-drama about a pair of transgender sex workers in Los Angeles was shot entirely on iPhone 5s phones, giving the film a degree of in-your-face realism that most movies struggle to achieve. Transgender female actress Kitana Kiki Rodriguez plays a sex worker who goes on the warpath after learning her pimp boyfriend was unfaithful. Though the film netted strong reviews on the international festival circuit, it would take a brave distributor to pick it up for theatrical release in Japan — it's worth watching while you've got the chance.

Trap (Taklub)

Master of modern-day miserabilism Brillante Ma Mendoza is having five of his films screened at TIFF, four of which are being shown in Japan for the first time. These include the Filipino auteur's recent feature, "Trap," set in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, the 2013 storm that claimed over 6,300 lives in the Philippines. Filmed documentary-style in areas left devastated by the typhoon, it offers a sobering portrait of families attempting to recover from a disaster that has long disappeared from international headlines. Viewers in search of straightforward entertainment should look elsewhere.