Offering a glimpse of life in (almost) every continent on the planet, Mac Cinema’s schedule for the fall semester will provide some of the most diverse, free entertainment around. The list combines popular favorites, a few esoteric picks and a French classic—many of which have won prizes at film festivals worldwide. The following calendar shows off the choice items and presents a summary of each. All films screen at 7 and 10 p.m. in the John B. Davis lecture hall on Fridays and Saturdays (with the exception of Songs From the Second Floor and 23).
 

September 12 & 13: 25th Hour (Spike Lee, United States). Drug dealer Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) has 24 hours of freedom left before beginning a 7-year prison sentence. He spends his last night in town — a decimated, post-9/11 New York City — saying goodbye to his friends and trying to figure out who tipped him off to the cops.
 

September 19 & 20: City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Brazil). Spanning three decades, this film tells the story of one of the most notorious favelas in Rio de Janeiro, the City of God, and how one boy tries to escape the world of seemingly endless violence to become a photographer. One of the biggest arthouse hits of the last year.
 

September 25 & 26: Songs From the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden). An absurdist apocalyptic comedy, composed of precisely-staged vignettes, in which a series of minor catastrophes leads to global doom. This is something you have to see to believe.
 

October 10 & 11: Rabbit-Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, Australia). A moving story about racial prejudice in 1930’s Australia, concerning three half-caste girls who flee a government internment camp and walk 1500 miles home, traveling alongside the rabbit-proof fence that spans the entire Outback.
 

October 16 & 17: 23 (Hans Christian Schmid, Germany). This thriller about a 19-year-old computer hacker who starts believing in a worldwide conspiracy, somehow organized around the number 23, is based on a true story. Narcotics and the KGB are also involved in the story.
 

October 31 & November 1: The Circle (Jafar Panahi, Iran). Set in the busy streets of Tehran, this film depicts the lives of women coping with day-to-day life while restricted by the larger system of laws, regulations and customs. Banned in Iran, but considered a great work everywhere else.
 

November 7 & 8: Trembling Before G-d (Sandi DuBowski, United States). A documentary about gay and lesbian Hasidic and Orthodox Jews and their profound dilemma: how to reconcile their faith with the biblical prohibitions against homosexuality.
 

November 14 & 15: Elling (Petter Naess, Norway). This quirky comedy presents the absurdities of modern life through the eyes of Elling, who (along with his roommate) has just been released from a provincial mental hospital and moved into a state-subsidized apartment in Oslo.
 

November 21 & 22: Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, France). One of the most beautiful movies ever made, and a touchstone of the French New Wave movement. French novelist Jim and Austrian scholar Jules meet in Paris in the 1910s and remain friends for life, even through their mutual love for free-spirited Catherine (Jeanne Moreau).
 

December 5 & 6: ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran). Invited by the UN to shoot a documentary about the orphans of Uganda, Kiarostami (one of the most important living filmmakers) captures a nation ravaged by war and AIDS/HIV, but also the determined future of those working for a brighter future.
 

December 12 & 13: The Quiet American (Philip Noyce, United States/Germany). Set in 1952, this adaptation of Graham Greene’s spy novel is both a love story and a political thriller concerning an English veteran reporter (Michael Caine), an idealistic U.S. aid worker and a Vietnamese mistress, all caught in the turbulence of the Indochin