Today at AFI Festival

Following are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival. All screenings at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica. Information: (213) 466-1767.

Highly Recommended:

“THE THREAT” (Sweden, 1987; director Stefan Jarl; 3:30 p.m.). One of the great ecological documentaries, “The Threat” combines a painter’s breathtaking pictorial sense, a reporter’s fact-finding intensity and a crusader’s burning rage at our modern assault on the environment: in this case, the poisoning of the vast Lapp reindeer herds on the Northern Swedish borders in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Jarl’s poetic and visual powers, the equal of his famous mentor Arne Sucksdorff’s, are here used to record both the landscape’s beauty and its possible destruction. The film, full of haunting images of life and nature in jeopardy, is both lyric and lament. (Michael Wilmington)

“YOL” (Turkey, 1982; Serif Goren/Yilmaz Guney; 1:30 p.m.). Written and planned in prison by the late Yilmaz Guney, and directed for him by Serif Goren, this 1982 Oscar winner seems a great film, which makes its depiction of prison suffering--and a week of leave for five inmates--bearable. “Yol,” which means “the trek of life,” is a vast panorama of life in contemporary Turkey, its harshness relieved by a sweeping majesty, natural eloquence and raw beauty. “Yol’s” key point: Turkey itself is a prison, shackled by feudal traditions and customs as surely as by any military regime. (Kevin Thomas)

“THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR” (France, 1981; Francois Truffaut; 1:45 and 7 p.m.). A late masterpiece by Truffaut. Wild Gerard Depardieu and smooth Fanny Ardant in a tale of adulterous obsession and provincial passion, done with such cool urgency and surgical precision that it burns like ice. The story superficially resembles American domestic murder thrillers; the visuals recall Hitchcock. But Kleist was the literary model and the tone is unusually sober and tragic. It’s in the mood of Truffaut’s “Story of Adele H.”: clear-eyed and piteous, with terrifying undercurrents. (M.W.)

“WHO’S WHO” (Great Britain, 1978; Mike Leigh; 6:45 p.m.). One of Leigh’s few ventures into upper-middle-class life, this look at the days and nights of workers in a stock brokerage firm is a marvelously observed, devastating piece of work, an acid satire on pate-scarfing pretentious twits. Though Leigh’s usual unreserved sympathy for his characters is absent here, some of them, like the upper-class wanna-be Alan Dixon, are as unforgettable as any he and his actors ever created. (Kenneth Turan)

“THE GOOD PEOPLE” (Sweden; Stefan Jarl; 9:15 p.m.). This superb Swedish film, Jarl’s fiction feature debut, has inevitably been compared with “My Life as a Dog.” But it is on a far higher level of artistic achievement. One of the most acutely observed portraits of childhood ever filmed and an exquisite expression of a child’s inevitable loss of innocence, it eschews conventional film narrative in a bold, successful attempt to reflect the random course of a child’s imagination--in this case, of a highly independent 7-year-old (the remarkable Viggo Lundberg), with a passion for ornithology. (K. Th.)

Recommended

“ALIAS LA GRINGA” (Peru, Alberto Durant; 1 and 6:15 p.m.). Peruvian films are so rare stateside that this efficient, atmospheric prison escape thriller, taken from life, automatically gains interest. It’s decently acted and well photographed on eye-catching outdoor locations--prison island to city slums--by Cuban deep-focus virtuoso Mario Garcia Joya. (M.W.)

“A PLACE FOR JAZZ” (United States, Richard Broadman; 3:45 p.m.). Don’t read anything about this terrific documentary on the hugely successful 1369 Club, in Cambridge, Mass.--featuring such jazz artists as Archie Shepp, Rebecca Parris, Bunny Smith and many more--in order to experience the full impact of its unexpected conclusion. (K.Th.)

“ENCHANTED APRIL” (Great Britain; Mike Newell; 4:15 and 9:30 p.m.) Rainy, repressed England; sunny, romantic Italy. There’s a touch of E.M. Forster’s dialectic in this ‘20s romance from Elizabeth Von Arnim’s book: Four London ladies (including Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright), on holiday in a luxuriant Italian villa, find sunlight and love in equal measure. Filmed before in 1935, “April” was a notorius RKO flop, but this time, director Mike Newell and scenarist Peter Barnes get it right. It’s warm, amiable, comfortable, a little hazy and everything turns out fine; just what you’d want from a vacation. Some will be irritated, others enchanted. (M.W.)

“SATURDAY NIGHT, SUNDAY MORNING” (United States; Louis Guida; 9 p.m.). Subtitled “The Travels of Gatemouth Moore,” this wonderful documentary covers Moore’s high-living years as a blues singer-composer--”the greatest,” according to B.B. King--and his latter-day decades as a traveling evangelical preacher and gospel singer. Moore, a warm, thundering presence even as he approaches 80, does not turn his back on the blues although now he rarely sings them. (K.Th.)