As ever, the Maine movie scene offers treasures beyond the multiplex. So come on out and see these varied and valuable movies playing through November 23rd on the big screen. 

‘It Was Just an Accident’

Playing November 7-20, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films

There are no artists in the world today more courageous than Iranian director Jafar Panahi. Bold statement, sure, but if your work has seen you arrested by your government multiple times and your filmography notes that several of your films have been “filmed illegally,” you’re doing something right. 

In his newest film (shot, yes, in secret in defiance of the Iranian government), a minor auto accident sees a former political prisoner recognize the family man driver as the sadistic guard who tortured him. Or does he? A taut, nerve-shredding thriller of coincidence and conscience ensues, with the masterful Panahi (“The Circle,” “This Is Not a Film,” “No Bears”) threading his country’s oppressive political climate through an ordinary man’s morally complex quest for vengeance. And if you want to draw any parallels to what’s going on in America right now, I’m not going to stop you. 

‘Riefenstahl’

Sunday, November 9th, SPACE, 534 Congress St., space538.org

Leni Riefenstahl remains one of the most controversial artists of all time. This new documentary examining Riefenstahl’s work as the Nazis’ (that’s the WWII iteration) number one filmmaker and propagandist makes the compelling case that the late German director isn’t controversial enough. 

Poring through never-before-seen documents and interviews, director Adres Veiel digs deeper than anyone has into both Leni Riefenstahl’s work and her long, post-war campaign of image rehabilitation as she portrayed herself as a naive artist with no knowledge of the white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, and mass exterminations that led to the Holocaust. Yeah, not so much.

A former film star whose wholesome “pure” image of German racial perfection she skillfully brought to her seminal propaganda films “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” Riefenstahl similarly used her storytelling powers to whitewash her own complicity as the Nazis’ chief purveyor of misinformation. For anyone watching the Trump regime blatantly attempt to likewise rewrite any facts they find inconvenient to their current actions, this film is a must-watch. 

‘The Set-Up’

Wednesday, Nov. 12 and Saturday, Nov. 15. Kinonik, 12 Cassidy Point Drive, Portland. kinonik.org

Portland’s keepers of our 16mm film history present a restored print of this gripping 1949 boxing drama from director Robert Wise (“The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story”). Washed-up fighter Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) agrees to one last bout against a younger, mob-backed challenger to try and provide a new life for himself and his wife. The fix is in, but Stoker’s manager is so sure his aging fighter will lose, he doesn’t bother to tell him, leading to one of the most brutal on-screen boxing matches until “Raging Bull” came along. 

Based on a poem of all things, the original story featured an African-American protagonist, but RKO refused to cast a Black actor. Ryan (a former boxer) steps in to deliver a heartbreaker of a performance though as a noble loser who refuses to lose on purpose. As ever, the fine folks at Kinonik deserve a championship belt for showing such overlooked classics on the big screen as they were intended. 

‘Nashville’

Saturday, Nov. 15, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, portlandmuseum.org/films

PMA Films is running a program called Fall of ’75, celebrating that absurdly fruitful filmmaking season. And no movie better represents that golden, all-too-short period where filmmakers’ artistic vision was king than “Nashville,” Robert Altman’s sprawling, three-hour kaleidoscope portrait of America through the lens of the titular city’s country music scene. 

A stellar cast (look for Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Karen Black, Henry Gibson, Jeff Goldblum, Shelley Duvall, Scott Glenn, Geraldine Chaplin, Ned Beatty, and a host more) peoples the late, great Altman’s portrait of America on the brink of its bicentennial. Zooming in on some 24 major characters as they meet, break up, hook up, duet, and otherwise navigate a bustling landscape of singers, dreamers, schemers, politicians, assassins, and others, “Nashville” is both intimate and insightful, wryly funny and wrenchingly tragic. It’s America in all its richness and absurdity, scored to the sometimes plaintive, sometimes ridiculous strains of the region’s signature music (with songs written and performed live by the actors). Altman, director of “M*A*S*H*” (the movie) and countless other works of improvisational brilliance, viewed his country with a mix of cynicism and bemused awe, and “Nashville” remains his masterpiece. 

‘Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989’

Sunday, Nov. 16, Space, 534 Congress St., Portland. space538.org

Sometimes a country’s history is best represented from the outside, where filmmakers without vested interest can approach events with unimpeded clarity. At least that’s the contention of director Göran Hugo Olsson, who helmed 2011’s “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” a compilation of Swedish TV’s coverage of the American civil rights movement. In this new act of television archaeology, Olsson takes on Swedish TV’s decades of coverage of the ever-simmering Israel-Palestine conflict with similarly illuminating results. 

Swedish TV only began broadcasting in 1957 (ease up, it’s freezing there), and the troubled relationship between Israelis and Palestinians was one of the first stories Swedish filmmakers seized upon, their subsequent years of coverage here shown to evolve in response to the steadily worsening situation. As he did with “The Black Power Mixtape,” Olssen presents a fascinating outsider’s view of a fraught and complex event, just at a time when the conflict in Palestine has gone far darker and bloodier than even the worst observers likely imagined. 

‘Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong’

Sunday, Nov. 23, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland. portlandmuseum.org/films

An encore presentation, this documentary about the eccentric, rag-tag heroes maintaining Portland’s aging water treatment plant won the first ever Fowlie Audience Award at this year’s Camden International Film Festival. Maine directors Kaitlyn Schwalje and Alex Wolf Lewis will be on hand for a Q&A following one of the most oddly entertaining films you’ll ever see about sewage. And I mean that. 

Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and his cat.