Festival director Philip Cheah said he was informed Thursday that it was disallowed by the Media Development Authority, which overseas the censorship board. Tickets for the film had been told out.

David The Tolhildan, a 54-minute Kurdish film, focuses on a Swiss national joining the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party. Jihad For Love, an 81-minute documentary, is about a gay South African.

Bakushi is a 90-minute documentary on the practice of "rope-tying" in Japan.

"Bakushi contains prolonged sequences of rope masters tying up nude women and subjecting them to various degrees of physical abuse and sexual degradation for erotic gratification," Chua said. "The theme normalises unnatural fetishes and behaviour."