Courtney Hunt's Frozen River took me to a place I'd never been before: a Mohonk reservation where a young Indian woman with a childlike voice teams up with a white single mother to smuggle illegal immigrants over a sheet of ice. Hunt's first feature, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, opens the 37th edition of the New Directors/New Films series, which runs from March 26 through April 6 at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater.

Twenty-six features and six shorts have been selected for this year's festival. Not every film is guaranteed to strike an emotional chord, but chances are good you'll encounter something brand-new -- from the marvelous Alex, a fifteen-year-old hermaphrodite in Lucía Puenzo's debut film XXY (pictured), to the odd cast of characters in Naoko Ogigami's quirky Megane. Check the official site for the complete program.