Now that the nearly two-week 2007 Sundance Film Festival has passed, filmmakers, critics, dyed-in-the-wool film buffs and even general viewers almost instinctively begin mulling over the event. Was this a disappointing year? Was it even better than usual?

For my money, it was probably one of the best.

And was there a palpable difference between this year and past years? And is there a hint that new films by independent film directors seem to be going in a different direction?

Well, maybe.

The films seemed a little tougher this year — a little heavier, perhaps, and even more disturbing than usual — and, more often than not, designed to make you think and feel, rather than just sit back and simply enjoy.

• There was definitely a more international flavor: Iraq and Afghanistan were there in more than just one or two films.

The jarring, eye-opening, award-winning Iraqi documentary "No End in Sight" chronicles the devastating and inexcusable errors and misjudgments that have made Iraq the hell-hole of violent chaos it should never have been.

On the other hand, "Enemies of Happiness" focuses on the campaign and victory of female freedom fighter Malalai Joya in Afghanistan.

• Set in another trouble spot, the enlightening documentary "Hot House" reveals how Israeli prisons are inadvertently becoming breeding grounds for Palestinian terrorist plots.

• "Nanking" (which won an award for best editing) depicts the tragic events of 1937 when the Japanese army invaded the city of Nanking, China, and killed 2,000 Chinese and raped tens of thousands of women, and only a small group of expatriate Westerners was able to provide a sort of oasis of safety for the victims.

• Films about illegal immigrants seemed to crop up almost everywhere in the festival, whether it was the gripping "Padre Nuestro," where two Mexican boys try to survive on the dark streets of New York, or "Under the Same Moon," where a much younger boy searches for his mother in Los Angeles. And "Welcome Europa" shows foreign immigrants from many countries desperately seeking survival in major European cities.

• Two of the festival's most memorable films dealt with Chinese immigrants: "Year of the Fish" — an unforgettable feature film done with live actors, yet wonderfully using the algorithmic technology that gives the film the appearance of having been painted with a brush — is set in New York City's Chinatown; "Ghosts" (the name that Asians often use for Caucasians) expertly re-enacts a real event in which a group of Chinese immigrants, mistreated in England, are drowned while searching for cockleshells along the coast.

• In the golden-orange-toned "Buried Treasure," an immigrant from Nigeria travels to Burkina Faso to daily descend into a deep, narrow and dusty shaft in search of gold, and in "The Devil Came on Horseback," an American witnesses the catastrophic genocide going on in Darfur.