Woodstock Film Festival
Woodstock, New York; October 13 to October 17
Screening more than 125 films in four days, this up-and-coming festival packs more punch than you might expect. In addition to previewing films like David Gordon Green’s Undertow, and picking some of the best films on the festival circuit (The Woodsman, Notre Musique), the festival will screen David O. Russell’s controversial, short Iraq documentary Soldiers Pay, which Warner Bros. recently refused to distribute.
MexicoNow
BAM; through October 17
BAM’s Mexican cinema series concludes with five films from influential producer Bertha Navarro, including Andrès Wood’s whirligig fishing-town film, Loco Fever, and goth-comic lover Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone.
Recent Films From Hong Kong
Film Society of Lincoln Center; October 18 to October 28
Check out Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s terrific “Infernal Affairs” series, about a police detective who secretly works for the Triads-and four films by the brilliantly prolific director Johnnie To, including his Running on Karma, a strange but wonderful murder-mystery romp about a male stripper named Biggie, as played by actor Andy Lau in what is probably film’s most hilarious rubber bodysuit.
20th Anniversary Israel Film Festival
Various locations; October 14 to October 28
Two weeks of Israeli feature films, television dramas, and documentaries. The fest kicks off with Avi Nesher’s drama Turn Left at the End of the World, a sixties period piece about neighboring families in Israel from Morocco and India, and concludes with the Stateside premiere of The Syrian Bride, Eran Riklis’s film about an Israeli woman who leaves the Golan Heights to marry a Syrian television star.