About to enter its 42nd edition, the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “New Directors/New Films” program is one of the longest-running showcases of independent cinema in the country. It was among the earliest champions of directors like Chantal Akerman and Pedro Almodovar, and it’s inducting a new crop of talent with a series of screenings March 20-31.

Explorations of violence characterize several of this year’s highlights, including the New York premiere of Alexandre Moors’s tale of two snipers, “Blue Caprice,” which kicks off the event on March 20. Elsewhere, Joshua Oppenheimer investigates the minds of murderers in “The Act of Killing.” Pirates seize a Danish cargo ship in Tobias Lindholm’s “A Hijacking,” and Mauricio Arango’s short film “Everything Near Becomes Far” meditates on a surprise act of violence that occurs on a lush stretch of the Andes mountains.

The series closes on March 30 with one of its more recognizable names, Sarah Polley’s, who will be present at both screenings of her journey into the meaning of truth and memory, “Stories We Tell.”

— Rachel Corbett

(Photo: Film still from Mauricio Arango’s “Everything Near Becomes Far”)

Tags: Chantal Akerman, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Mauricio Arango, Museum of Modern Art, News, Pedro Almodovar, Rachel Corbett