A string of film festivals feature among this month’s cultural offerings with themes ranging from the Balkans to Portuguese colonial conflicts in Africa. The long-awaited reopening of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow will delight dance fans, while for art lovers an exhibition on Turner, Monet and Twombly in Stockholm looks at the pioneering artists’ struggles with their own private battles during the second half of their lives.

Belgium

Festival: Brazil is the star of Belgium’s autumn/winter cultural festival, Europalia, putting the spotlight on the South American country’s “diversidade” (diversity). Until January 15, more than 600 events ranging from exhibits to dance performances and theatre will take place in 200 locations across Belgium and neighbouring countries. The festival will feature 2,650 artworks. www.europalia.be

Cinema: The International Francophone Film Festival is hosted by the Belgian southern city of Namur, with award-winning French actress Ariane Ascaride invited as the guest of honour. The new film of Belgian actor and director Bouli Lanners, Les Geants (The Giants), opened the 26th edition of the festival. Some 140 films – from France to Quebec, Africa and Vietnam – will feature till Friday. www.fiff.be

Italy

Photography: The 10th edition of the International Photographic Festival, this year entitled Motherland, runs at the Macro contemporary art museum in Rome until October 23 and explores relations between photography and territory. www.macro.roma.museum

Art: The MAXXI – museum of 21st century art – presents Indian Highway, an exhibition in Rome featuring 30 artists, 60 artworks and four installations exploring the contemporary Indian artistic scene. Runs until January 29. www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Norway

Cinema: Films from the South, a film festival featuring dozens of films from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America In Oslo cinemas from Thursday to October 16. www.filmfrasor.no

Dance: The Oslo International Dance Festival (Coda) this year focuses on choreographies from another era, and features Ballet Preljocaj of France, Yvonne Rainer of the United States, Stephanie Thiersch of Germany and Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke of Belgium. From October 10 to 23 at several Oslo venues.

www.codadancefest.no/en

Austria

Cinema: The defiantly non-commercial and eclectic Vienna Film Festival lets loose for the 49th time, with 300 films and documentaries shown over two weeks plus a retrospective on Belgian director Chantal Akerman. From October 20 to November 2. www.viennale.at

Art: Vienna’s Kunst Haus Wien honours Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) with an exhibition exploring the genius and life of the “ecological visionary” who hated straight lines, including some works never seen before in the city of his birth. Until November 6.

www.kunsthauswien.com

Britain

Art: London’s largest contemporary art fair returns to Regent’s Park. The Frieze Art Fair attracts more than 1,000 artists, 170 galleries and art buyers from all over the world. Tickets are required but visitors can walk through the Frieze Sculpture Park for free, discovering the latest trends in contemporary sculpture in the enchanting surroundings of its English Garden. From October 13 to 16.

www.friezeartfair.com

Dance: The Merce Cunningham Dance Company comes to London for the last time. The company will disband after this goodbye tour, which was planned by the US choreographer before his death in 2009. The Legacy Tour is the last chance for fans to see the dancers personally trained by the master of the stage, with a programme encompassing 40 years of Cunningham’s work, including collaborations with John Cage, Brian Eno and Andy Warhol. From tomorrow to Saturday.

www.barbican.org.uk

Germany

Art: Berlin’s Pergamon Museum presents the first major exhibition dedicated entirely to the ancient city of Pergamon. A newly-designed 360-degree panoramic view of the city will be on display, bringing the ancient flourishing centre of Greek art and culture in the year 129 AD to life. Until September 2012.

www.smb.museum/pergamon-panorama_/

Art: The Kunsthalle in Hamburg offers a comprehensive retrospective on Max Liebermann, credited with introducing modernism to German painting. Offering more than 100 paintings, the exhibit embraces rural subjects, to the bourgeoisie at their leisure, and portraits. Until February 2012.

www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de

Sweden

Photography: On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, an exhibition by photographer Nick Brandt that captures the vanishing grandeur of the natural world of East Africa. At Fotografiska Museet from Friday to January 8.

http://en.fotografiska.eu/

Art: Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings, an exhibition about the pioneering artists, each in their own time re-vered and reviled.

It presents works from the second half of their careers, as they struggled to come to terms with the passage of time, mortality and loss. At Moderna Museet. From Saturday to January 15.

www.modernamuseet.se

Switzerland

Art: About 200 masterpieces by surrealists including Salvador Dalì, Joan Mirò and Rene Magritte go on show at the Beyeler museum in the Swiss northern town of Basel. The exhibition, which includes not just paintings but also photographs, jewellery and films, remains open until January 29.

www.fondationbeyeler.ch

Portugal

Film: The ninth edition of the Lisbon Documentary Festival puts the spotlight on Africa with works on the Portuguese colonial conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s which led to independence in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Also featured will be a retrospective on French director Jean Rouch, famed for his documentaries on African peoples. From October 20 to 30 at various venues. www.doclisboa.org

Russia

The historic home of the Bolshoi Theatre reopens in Moscow with a glittering gala concert of opera and ballet after a half-decade closure for a repeatedly delayed reconstruction. October 28.