2007 is the Year of the Pig, and in the porcine world of movie-making and marketing, Hollywood will still be bringing home the bacon. Bouncing back from a bad ’05, Hollywood’s grosses were up, thanks to Depp’s and Disney’s merger for seaway-robbery profits. Come May, Tinseltown hopes the three-headed beast of three-peats-Shrek the Third, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates, Part III-will bring in even bigger bucks.

As Hollywood looks forward to rolling in the slop of blockbuster sequels, the runts over in the indie, foreign, documentary and art-film litters wait for scraps from the box office to be thrown their way. So here’s a lowdown on the highbrow-the wild bunch that isn’t interested in any ham-fisted plots, pretty-in-pink romances, or hog-wild F/X. Sniff them out at your local rental store, hoof it over to your local arthouse cinema, or track them down online ...

If the grizzled old veterans of mainstream-Scorsese, Eastwood-and not-so-mainstream cinema-Frears, Almódovar-won the critics over in 2006, the youngsters were left out in the cold: Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain was shrugged away; Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette slipped out of theatres with a whimper.

Two old hands, both from Asia, set for more success are Hou Hsiao-Hsien, with The Red Balloon (starring Juliette Binoche), and Wong Kar-Wai (In The Mood For Love), with the American road trip romance My Blueberry Nights. Both will find eager art-film audiences later in 2007.

Among the younger breed, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, after the best first three films in recent memory (the third, Lilya 4-Ever, can be ordered on DVD), has stopped any friendly tale-wagging. He’s followed the pseudo-porn, take-it-or-leave-it A Hole in My Heart, with the hermaphroditic, dialogue-sparse, black-and-white Container (with Jena Malone). Both non-crowd-pleasers may slip out on DVD; otherwise, check for them on the cold shoulders of the information roadkill highway.

Certainly Richard Kelly, after the cult success of Donnie Darko, doesn’t seem in the running for any best-in-show ribbons. His Southland Tales (featuring The Rock and Sarah Michelle Gellar) was the boar of the 2006 Cannes fest, a tale of post-apocalyptic LA that Jason Solomons, from the Observer, said “was so bad it made me wonder if [Kelly] had ever met a human being.” Brave Kelly’s vision of the new world come spring.

It’s anyone’s guess as to who will bring their pet projects to the world’s biggest film festival next year, but some that premiered during France’s May days in 2006 are slowly making their way to our screens. A must-see, Ken Loach’s harrowing Palme d’Or-winner, The Wind That Shakes The Barley (with Ciaran Hinds), set in the ferment of 1920s Ireland, is due in spring. Loach’s previous work, one-third of the portmanteau film Tickets-all three stories are set on a train-to which the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami also contributed, still hasn’t rolled out on DVD.

Bruno Dumont, whose previous 29 Palms can be sniffed out online, wowed Cannes last year with Flandres, a look at a few locals from a French village who are sent off to a war in the Middle East. It should sneak onto screens or shelves in 2007, along with Roberto Benigni’s comic take on the Iraq War, The Tiger and the Snow.

Nanni Moretti’s satire The Cayman, which also surfaced at Cannes, took a bite out of right-wing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and may have helped defeat him in Italy’s last election. Look for it to slither onto screens or shelves this spring. The marital storm-tracking Climates, another Cannes opener, from Turkish delight Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant), should see DVD release in the coming months.

The Italian, from Andrei Kravchuk (The Thief), about an orphan trying to find his mother in today’s Russia, was a champ in Toronto and should hit screens in January. Another incoming TIFF winner is Jafar Panahi’s Offside, about women trying to get into a football match in Iran. Two Asian fest faves should arrive, too: Syndromes and a Century, from young visionary Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose Tropical Malady can be hunted down on DVD) may get a quiet DVD release in 2007; Jia Zhangke’s acclaimed Still Life, a portrait of citizens returning to a flooded town, will be on display.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, set in an East Germany gripped by the Stasi secret police, barreled through many festivals in 2006 before chomping into the European Film Awards, even beating out Volver. It’s due for release in February.

Already scheduled for Sundance in January is Snow Angels, the latest from poetic American director David Gordon Green (All The Real Girls, Undertow). English up-and-comer Andrea Arnold’s shadowy surveillance flick, Red Road, which has wound its way from Cannes to the Utah fest, should be unleashed soon after.

Also rising at Sundance: Nick Broomfield (Biggie and Tupac) makes the tale-switch from docs to dramas with Ghosts, about a Chinese illegal immigrant struggling to survive in London; Chris Smith follows Broomfield’s lead, jumping from the true stories of American Movie and The Yes Men into The Pool, a Hindi-spoken film set in Goa. Rescue Dawn, about a US pilot (Christian Bale) shot down over Laos, sees Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) scamper onto based-on-a-true-story turf.

Amongst true-blue docs, look for Deliver Us From Evil, coming in January. Amy Berg’s chronicle of a pedophile priest in California, long sheltered by his Catholic masters, is one of the most critically raved films of the year, according to the metacritic.com trackers. Then there’s Michael Moore: Sicko, his investigation into the American healthcare system, will come out in the summer, and follow-up Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2 is also to be released in 2007.

In our own backyard, Sarah Polley’s Away From Her, adapted from an Alice Munro story, will be free to roam the country after a Sundance showing. Wacky Winnipegger Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon The Brain! should amble onto DVD, at least, in the next few months. David Cronenberg’s London crime thriller Eastern Promises (with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts) is marked for September.

Three little pigs that have flirted with the big bad wolf of Hollywood will be trotting out in 2007. PT Anderson’s turn-of-the-century, Texas-set adaptation of an Upton Sinclair book, There Will Be Blood stars maverick Daniel Day-Lewis. David Lynch’s surely strange Inland Empire, with Laura Dern and Jeremy Irons, merges illusion and reality as actors are swallowed up by their onscreen personas. The Coen brothers will try to make it Blood Simple again with their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men.

And while the hind-end of 2006 saw the release of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men in major US cities, we can look forward to the dystopia thriller, already being championed on many top-10 lists, coming our way this week.