THROUGH NOVEMBER 30

Film Institute International Film Festival

With Hollywood hegemony on the rise even in such filmmaking capitals as Paris, American moviegoers must take their foreign films where they can get them. This month that’s at AFI, which is offering recent work by such estimable but not necessarily marketable directors as Wim Wenders, John Boorman, Masahiro Shinoda, Lars von Trier, Aki Kaurismäki, and Péter Gothár. Originally conceived as a documentary, Wenders’ Lisbon Story has turned into a comedy about a director and a sound man in the Portuguese city to make a documentary (Nov. 2, 6:30 p.m.; Nov. 3, 8:45 p.m.). Boorman’s Two Nudes Bathing is a short film about a 16th-century Dutch painter engaged to paint two innocent teen-age girls, a commission that threatens their innocence (shown with Augustin, a reportedly charming French comedy, Nov. 3, 6:30 p.m.; Nov. 4, 2 p.m.). Shinoda’s Sharaku is a visually lush evocation of the “floating world” of the pleasure district in medieval Tokyo (then called Edo) (Nov. 10, 6:30 p.m.; Nov. 11, 8:45 p.m.). Von Trier’s Medea transplants the classical Greek drama to North Sea locations (Nov. 17, 6:30 & 10 p.m.; Nov. 19, 7 p.m.). Kaurismäki’s Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana returns to the mode and site of his early successes: on the road in Finland (Nov. 24, 8:45 p.m.; Nov. 25, 3 p.m.; Nov. 25, 9 p.m.). Gothár’s The Outpost (pictured) is the allegorical tale of an engineer inexplicably transferred to a remote new post (Nov. 29, 6:30 p.m.). More than 20 other films will be screened as well. At the Kennedy Center’s American Film Institute Theater. $6.50. (202) 785-4600. (Mark Jenkins)