Stellar world films abound at Sundance

At Sundance, the category of world cinema documentaries had several eye-opening films.

"211: Alma" examines the life, work and death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovsky who, because of her sympathies and concern with what was happening in Chechnya, became the 211th journalist to be killed in Russia since 1991.

"Tibet in Song" sheds light on the China/Tibet conflict and the attempt by China to erase Tibetan identity.

"Nollywood Babylon" offers insight into the state of movie-making in Nigeria, which, just behind America and India, surprisingly produces the most movies in the world.

And the fascinating "Kimjongilia" presents a rare insider's look at North Korea with the stories of several defectors, detailing their lives under that regime and their escapes into China or elsewhere.

Some of the best films are from Ireland, Japan and Mexico.

The Irish film "Five Minutes of Heaven," by German director Oliver Hirshbiegel, tops my own personal list at the moment and, like the current "Frost/Nixon," this too focuses on the filming, for TV, of a landmark confrontation between two potentially volatile individuals — and both situations make for surprisingly tense and even gripping cinema. Liam Neeson plays a man who, 33 years earlier, had killed a man from the opposite side of the Irish conflict, and James Nesbitt plays the younger brother of the slain Irishman who, when just a small boy, had been the sole witness of the slaying.

Much slower in pace, yet fascinating, is the lyrical and futuristic Japanese film, "The Clone Returns Home." Directed by Kanji Nakajima, the film centers around a young astronaut who agrees to be part of an experimental cloning program in case of death. The Japanese have a special knack for films of this kind, which gives it a quality that is at once both fantastic yet oddly realistic and believable.

A film from Mexico is "Sin Nombre" ("without a name"), the raw and powerful story of a young Latino who defects from a brutal gang that ruthlessly makes its living by robbing and sometimes killing immigrants illegally riding on top of trains in order to enter the U.S. Befriending a young girl among the maltreated immigrants and chased by the angry and retaliating gang members, the defector wins our sympathies at the same time that his plight takes us on a heart-stopping and heartbreaking flight for survival.