Moore said the attacks on the festival website began about 10 days ago.

'We've been subjected to a number of these attacks and we can see behind the scenes on our website that there are hundreds, well, if not thousands, of people from outside of Australia trying to get into our website and trying to damage us,' Moore told the BBC.

'This has been going on... since obviously the call from a Chinese consular official who told me in no uncertain terms that I was urged to withdraw this particular documentary from the film festival and that I had to justify my actions in including the film in our programme,' he added.

He said police were investigating the website attacks, which appear to come from a Chinese internet address.