• From Poland is "The Collector," by longtime director Felix Falk, featuring a remarkable performance by Andrzej Chyra as a man whose job is to collect goods from companies or individuals who have failed to pay their debts. When he realizes that one of those is a girl he had once loved, and when another person commits suicide, the power he has felt in his job becomes tainted, bringing on unexpected cataclysms.

• From Belgium and Spain comes a powerful and very moving co-production called "Hell in Tangier." Based on a real event: A bus driver from Brussels assigned to take a group of tourists to Morocco ends up unknowingly transporting a hidden shipment of drugs, which is discovered by the border guards. Similar to "Midnight Express," the film excruciatingly chronicles his frustrated efforts to clear himself, as well as the devastating treatment he undergoes over the many months — even years — he is forced to spend in prison.

• Also based on truth, at least partially — events taking place during Peru's political upheaval a few years back — is "Black Butterfly" in which a young judge, known for his honesty in the midst of much corruption is murdered. Convinced he was targeted by the present government, his fiancee sets out to get revenge. Both her character and that of the female journalist who ends up helping her will keep you on the edge of your seat.

• Two Scandinavian films also stood out for me. "En Soap" from Denmark continually jerks you around emotionally. A woman moves by herself into an apartment house after leaving the man she has been living with and develops a strange relationship with the man who lives in the apartment below her and who is set on undergoing a medical sex change. "Search," from Sweden, is somewhat lighter, yet follows the disasters and surprises of a woman nearing 40 who is advised to look for a mate through the Internet. Surprisingly, it turns out to be a much more serious film than it might have been in the hands of lesser actors or a more commercial writer and director.

• Even more powerful are two German films. The first, "Under the Ice," a totally engrossing story about a little boy who accidentally kills the small girl he was walking home from school, and his mother does everything she can to conceal what happened — which is complicated by the fact that her husband has just been made chief of police. Equally involving is "Warchild," a co-production by Germany and Slovenia. In this heartwrenching story, a young mother, 12 years after the civil war in Yugoslavia, sets out to try to find the daughter that her troubled husband had given away in hopes of saving the little girl's life.