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Cinematic minds—great or otherwise—apparently think alike, for the latest entry in the American Film Institute’s ongoing “European Union Showcase” sounds a bit like 8MM. In Alejandro Amenábar’s 1996 thriller Thesis, a young Spanish woman researching her college thesis on “audio-visual violence” learns of the existence of a snuff film shot on her school’s campus. The student’s interest in the film quickly becomes more than theoretical, especially when she begins to fear that she might be the murderous filmmaker’s next target. The movie’s central character is played by Ana Torrent, who was striking as the child protagonist of Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive and Carlos Saura’s Cria!. Thesis opens today at 6:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s American Film Institute National Theater. $6.50. (202) 785-4600. (Mark Jenkins)