The Chichester International Film Festival comes of age this month - and stellar stars from the silver screen will be joining the party.

As the festival celebrates its 21st anniversary, it is now recognised as one of the largest film festivals in England, and this year premieres, previews and new releases of the best of British and world cinema will be screened at the Chichester Cinema at New Park, the city's only independent cinema.

The festival, which runs from Thursday August 16 until Sunday September 2, will be launched with special open air screenings at the town's Priory Park of Guys & Dolls and a preview of Brave, Disney's animated film with the voices of Julie Walters, Emma Thompson and Billy Connolly.

There will be appearances by film stars Virginia McKenna and Sarah Miles, and the actor-writer Amanda Waring, with discussions hosted by Daniel Rosenthal, a film and theatre historian and lecturer from the Chichester Festival Theatre , and biographer Michael House on the author Somerset Maugham.

“Last year's festival was our most successful one to date,” says Roger Gibson, the festival's award-winning artistic director. “There was a 10% audience increase and we screened over 100 films from 20 countries in 130 programmes. We welcomed talent including David Hare, Michael Winner and the late lamented Ken Russell.”

This year, around 90 films will be screened, including Romeos from Germany, Iranian drama Circumstance, North Sea Texas, a story about the passionate longing of adolescence, and the ghost story In The Dark Half. Other films include Jack Kerouac's On the Road, directed by Walter Salles, who also directed The Motorcycle Diaries, and starring Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, the Canadian film Cloudburst, a road trip adventure starring Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, and About Elly, an Iranian film from Asghar Farhadi, the director of A Separation, which won the 2011 Oscar Best Foreign Film, the first Iranian film ever to win the award.

Premiering in the UK are the 2012 film Belle du Seigneur, an English language adaptation of a Swiss tale of tortured love starring Marianne Faithfull and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Now is Good with Dakota Fanning as a girl dying of leukaemia, the Norwegian films Jagama and Jagama 2, German terrorist thriller The Fourth State, a portrayal of an impossible marriage in the French film Belleville Tokyo, and Happy, Happy, an award-winning Norwegian film about a woman who believes family is everything but lives with a man who'd rather go out hunting with the boys.

One English film premiering at the festival is Shadow Dancer, a tense drama set in 1990s Belfast and starring Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough, and there will be previews of Eight, a contemporary spy film by David Hare and starring Bill Nighy and Michael Gambon, American indie film Lola Versus, Lawless with Guy Pearce and Shia Laboeuf in gangster mode, romcom Hysteria with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rupert Everett, and the French film Little Nicholas, about a boy who misunderstands a conversation and believes he is about to be sent away because his mother is pregnant.

The Focus on the Documentary programme includes Falls the Shadow, prolific film-maker/writer Tony Palmer's film about South African playwright Athol Fugard, and a Special Collection of Films will celebrate this year's 50th anniversary of the Chichester Festival Theatre. There will also be showings of three filmed live productions of Shakespeare at The Globe, including Romeo and Juliet and As you Like It.

The Servant star Sarah Miles introduces Term of Trial, the Lewis Gilbert film in which she starred, and talk about the role of Laurence Oliver as the first artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. The theatre's Daniel Rosenthal and the festival's artistic director Roger Gibson discuss Film & Theatre Relationship, while Michael House, the biographer of Somerset Maugham, discusses the author's prolific career with playwright Roger Harwood., the writer of The Dresser. Audiences are invited to join conversations with the actresses Virginia McKenna, who introduces Carve Her Name with Pride, and Amanda Waring, about her short film.

Live organ music accompanies a special screening of Phantom of the Opera at St John's Chapel at Chichester Cathedral, and there are also screenings of two operas, Rossini's La Traviata from a floating stage on the harbour at Sydney Opera House, and Turandot, Puccini's moving masterpiece.

While the opening gala film is still to be announced, the closing gala of the festival will be a special preview of the comedy Hope Springs, starring Meryl Street and Tommy Lee Jones.

The 21st Chichester International Film Festival, Thursday August 16 until Sunday September 2, at Chichester Cinema at New Park. For the full festival programme, visit www.chichestercinema.org