FILMS FROM AFAR: For the fifth year, the Trenton International Film Festival brings features from a range of countries to the Mill Hill Playhouse. Opening the festival Thursday, April 9 and shown here is “Felix and Meira,” set in Montreal’s Orthodox Jewish community.

A key component of Trenton’s efforts to revitalize itself is the promotion of cultural activities. Prominent among them are three annual film festivals, which have been drawing a growing group of film buffs to the capital city from the local area and beyond.

From Thursday, April 9 through Saturday, April 11, the five-year-old Trenton International Film Festival will return to Mill Hill Playhouse with a roster of seven films. None of these features — from South Korea, Latin America, Estonia, Canada, Australia, and Iran — have been seen in this country. This is part of the festival’s appeal.

“We’re only showing films not distributed in the United States,” says Susan Fou, a board member of the Trenton Film Society. “They have played only in festivals, but not in theaters. So we get people who want to see things they might not otherwise get to see. Last year, two of them, the Polish film Ida and the Swedish film We are the Best, ended up in art houses and Ida won an Oscar for best foreign language film.”

As members of the Film Society did last year, they hired Jed Ratfogel, a full-time film programmer at the Anthology Film Archive in New York, to curate the current series. “His job is going to festivals and looking at a variety of films,” said Ms. Fou. “So he’s out there seeing everything. He has worked hard on programming this as a festival, knowing that we’re looking for a wide range of drama, comedy, documentary, and more.”

This year’s festival has a theme of cross cultural encounters. “One of the films, Felix and Meira, is set in Montreal’s Orthodox Jewish community and deals with that community and non-Jews living closely together,” said Ms. Fou. “In Charlie’s Country, from Australia, the protagonist struggles to find his place within that country’s white and indigenous cultures.”

Other films in the series include two from Latin America that are comedic in tone. Gueros, from Mexico, follows a troublemaking teenager and his slacker older brother searching for their father’s favorite singer in the midst of a student strike. Two Shots Fired, made by Martin Rejtman, one of the founders of Argentine cinema, explores what happens when a boy inexplicably shoots himself twice but emerges unscathed.

There are two documentaries. “These are very personal,” Ms. Fou said. “They deal with that theme of cross cultural encounters, but within an individual. One of the filmmakers was born in Iran and immigrated to Belgium as a child. She’s now learning how to read and write Persian as an adult, and that’s the focus of the film. The other is by a filmmaker born in South Korea. The film is about North Korea. She weaves together interview footage with her father, who lived through the separation, and footage she shot herself while visiting North Korea as well as popular media footage, and she has commentary as well. So it’s about a culture that is her own, but vastly different from what she’s familiar with.”

The festival is divided into seven different programs. Six are feature length films, and the seventh has a short film and a longer feature. A festival pass is $25, while individual programs cost $8. Mill Hill Playhouse is located at 205 East Front Street in Trenton. For more information, visit www.trentonfilmsociety.com.