TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL

F ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. All screenings at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset. Information: (213) 466-1767. Highly Recommended:

“SWEET EMMA, DEAR BOBE”(Hungary; director Istvan Szabo; 4 & 9 p.m.). When a dictatorship falls, the absence of structure--the sheer number of choices suddenly available--can be terrifying. That’s the subject of Szabo’s new film, a trenchant, moving look at Hungary after the fall of communism. In the little world revealed here, of Budapest primary school teachers and administrators, we can see varying reactions of people thrust into “freedom”: petty bureaucrats clinging to vestiges of the “Old Order,” introverts plunged into confusion, adventurers succumbing to the siren calls of chaos and license. Szabo puts us into this world while maintaining poetic distance. At the end, with the two woman-friends of the title caught in a seemingly irresolvable contradiction, he achieves a freezingly sad vision. (Michael Wilmington)

Recommended:

“THE JOURNEY” and “DOG TAX”(Australia, Christopher Tuckfield; Hungary, Laszlo Santha; 1:30 & 6:45 p.m.). These two absorbing, if somewhat mismatched, featurettes have a common theme: extreme alienation from society and how people cope with it. In Tuckfield’s “The Journey,” Billie Sinclair, a 74-year-old blind and deaf Australian basket-weaver lives an admirably full life, which includes travel , communion, love and music. In the amusing comedy, “Dog Tax,” we learn the perils of excessive identification with one’s work as a zealous Hungarian dog tax collector virtually becomes canine himself to ferret out delinquents. (M.W.)

Others: “The Genius” (U.S.; Joe Gibbons & Emily Breer; 1:40, 4:05, 6:50 & 9:05 p.m.). This satire of the SoHo/East Village art scene has sharp ideas, but is too wearying, rambling and styleless to make it across the Hudson. (Kevin Thomas)