Around the world in 92 films and eight days

Filmmaker Rajnesh Domalpalli has some resume: He grew up in small towns in South India, watching his father work on dam-construction projects as a civil engineer. He studied computer engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai and then at the State University of New York. He ended up in Silicon Valley.

But something was missing, and Domalpalli enrolled in the film program at Columbia University. His thesis film for his 2006 graduation was "Vanaja," a look at the lower-caste in his native rural South India and a teenage girl intent on breaking through. Her goal is to learn the art form of Kuchipudi dance, but class lines keep working to derail her .

"Vanaja" has proven astonishingly hot at breaking through on its own: Its website lists 63 film festivals that have made it an official selection, and it's been racking up awards steadily. The movie comes to Boston this week as part of the fifth annual Boston International Film Festival, playing on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Boston Common. Thirty minutes of shorts open the program.

The BIFF has selected 92 films from 24 countries for this year's schedule. While most of them are shorts, including Boston University associate professor Sam Kauffman's Rwanda-based documentary "Massacre at Murambi" and West Bridgewater resident Jim Connell's animated thriller "Saul Goodman," the features include "When a Man Falls in the Forest" with Sharon Stone and Timothy Hutton as an unhappy Midwestern couple working through their ennui (with music by Smashing Pumpkins sad guy Billy Corgan); "The Orange Chronicles," a documentary about the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 told by Ukrainian-American filmmaker Damian Kolodiy; and "What's Going on up There," Boston filmmaker Maryanne Galvin's peek at the state of the space industry, with an introduction by Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.

The festival opens Wednesday and runs through the following Wednesday. All the movies play at the Boston Common. The festival schedule and descriptions of movies are posted at bifilmfestival .com.

BEST OF 48-HOUR FEST: Last month, nearly 100 teams of Boston filmmakers held a competition with one nutty premise: make a film in just 48 hours. They could organize a cast and crew ahead of time, but they only had from 7 p.m. on May 4 to 7 p.m. May 6 to write a script after being assigned an element (such as a character, prop, or line of dialogue), plan their set and costumes, rehearse, shoot, edit it down to between four and seven minutes, and design and fold in final sound.

Screenings of all the movies were held between May 8 and 16. Audience awards were given to 12, and the Best of the Fest are being bundled into a one-night event that takes place Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The three top winners will move to a national and, if they make the cut, international competition.

The names of all the team leaders and their movies are online at 48hourfilm.com/boston, along with more information about the annual program.

MOVING IMAGE AWARDEES: One of the fairy godmothers for New England artists is the LEF Foundation, which supports contemporary art production through cash grants. LEF New England recently announced its Moving Image Fund awards for filmmakers: it will be distributing $270,000 to 27 New England artists and another $30,000 in documentary fellowships to three filmmakers.

Among the Boston-area awardees are Heather Kapplow, for a film exploring Western notions of wealth; Julie Mallozzi, for a look at modern uses of the Native American peacemaking circle tradition; and Monika Navarro, for a documentary about the deportation to Mexico of her uncles and the results of being sent to a land they don't consider home. The full list of awardees and their projects is online at lef-foundation.org under "Moving Image Fund/Past Awards."

CONVERSATIONS OF NOTE: Back in 1962, Brian O'Doherty's interview with painter Edward Hopper was part of a Museum of Fine Arts/WGBH television series called "Invitation to Art." Excerpts of that interview are included in O'Doherty's documentary "Hopper's Silence," which plays on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the MFA. O'Doherty and Carol Troyen, the museum's Kristin and Roger Servison Curator of Paintings in the Art of the Americas department, will lead a discussion following the film. Details are at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: Silent film with live musical accompaniment this morning at 11, next Sunday at 11 a.m., and June 24, also at 11 a.m., at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Today it's "Clash of the Wolves"; next Sunday is "Kid Brother"; June 24 is "Pandora's Box" (617-734-2500 and cool idge.org).

The Newport International Film Festival begins Tuesday and runs through next Sunday. The closing night film is, alas, sold out -- it's a special screening of "Evening," which was shot in Newport and features a superstar cast including Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close -- but other films are up for grabs (newportfilmfesti val.com).

"Just an Ordinary Jew," a drama about what it means to be Jewish in today's Germany, at the MFA Thursday at 8:15 p.m. and next Sunday at 12:45 p.m., part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival "Encores" series (617-244-9899 and bjff.org).

Saturday at 11 a.m., a free screening of "Citizen Kane" at the Brattle Theatre to launch the Brattle Film Foundation's new "Elements of Cinema" series. On the second Saturday of every month the theater will show a film classic and follow it with a discussion about what makes it so totally awesome (617-876-6837 and brat tlefilm.org).

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.