This week’s movie picks, intentionally or not, follow some unfortunately timely themes. The complicity of “good people” trapped under evil, racist governments. The impossibility of staying clean in a dirty, corrupt world. The responsibility or artists to use their gifts to tell the truth — or be destroyed. Plus, Jack Nicholson running around with an axe. Just as a palate cleanser. 

Here are our picks for the best films screening in Maine’s indie theaters.

‘Days and Nights in the Forest’

Starts Sunday, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films.

Before his death in 1992, Indian director Satyajit Ray was one of those filmmakers whose deeply humanistic movies changed lives. In this transcendent 1970 film, four wealthy, pampered and not all that likable young Indian men decide to get away from the big city by bribing a desperate caretaker so they can lounge around an empty government villa in the country. That the four callow urbanites will change and grow through their initially thoughtless collision with the poorer locals is a given. That viewers will change with them through Ray’s gently heart-wrenching social drama is a gift. PMA Films has a glorious new 4K black-and-white restoration. 

‘Soda’

Sunday , The Hill Arts, 76 Congress St, Portland, thehillarts.me

A preview of this month’s Maine Jewish Film Festival (April 23-May 2), this mystery-drama based on true events follows a factory worker and former resistance fighter in 1955 Israel whose attraction to a recently arrived Jewish woman becomes a scandal after she’s accused of having abetted the Nazis while interned at Auschwitz.

Director Erez Tadmor’s period drama examines paranoia, prejudice, desire and survivor’s guilt as the lovestruck man digs deeper into just what people do to survive under unthinkable conditions. 

‘The Shining’

April 15, Nickelodeon Cinemas 6, 1 Temple St, Portland, patriot cinemas.com

Amidst all this real-world horror, why not settle in for some good, old, Stephen King-based classic horror. Maine’s terror master was never a fan of how legendary director Stanley Kubrick changed his 1977 novel for this 1980 Jack Nicholson movie, but it’s hard not to get swept up in Kubrick’s admittedly sketchy adaptation. You know the story — a family (Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, a creepy kid with psychic powers) move into an isolated hotel for the winter. Things do not go well. Still mesmerizing despite King’s understandable objections, “The Shining” on the big screen (for the Nick’s Wayback Wednesdays series) is still a chilly treat. 

‘A Foreign Affair’

April 15 and 18, Kinonik, 121 Cassidy Point, Portland, kinonik.org.

Legendary director Billy Wilder’s romantic drama takes place in the queasy peace of post-WWII Berlin. As in just post-war, as the bombed and defeated city is occupied by various allied armies, and the less scrupulous scour the shattered city for plunder and desperate women. Into this lawless milieu an American congresswoman (Jean Arthur) arrives on a fact-finding mission, finding instead a shifty GI (John Lund) having an affair with a beautiful cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) with a possibly shady past connected to the Nazis. Intrigue, comedy, romance and some eye-opening violence blend together with Wilder’s signature cheeky dialogue and hard-eyed realism. 

‘The Christophers’

Starts April 17, Maine Film Center, 93 Main Street, Waterville, watervillecreates.org

America’s most restless great filmmaker Steven Soderbergh turns his gaze on the modern art world and casts two amazing actors of different generations in this tale of forgery, greed, and unlikely friendship. Ian McKellen is a legendary painter whose decades-long retreat from the scene has left him broke and forgotten. Michaela Coel (“I May Destroy You”) is the former art forger sent by the artist’s greedy kids to complete a series of the former legends’ unfinished canvases so they can cash in after his impending death. Soderbergh mines the prickly relationship of artist and would-be scammer for unexpected heart, with McKellan and Coel both doing stellar work. 

‘Yes!’

Starts April 18, PMA Films, 7 Congress Square, Portland, portlandmuseum.org/films.

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s exuberantly brutal satire is another of the brash filmmaker’s blackly comic broadsides against his country’s government and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. A struggling comedian and musician makes a living catering to the whims of his country’s elite, only to find himself tasked with coming up with a new Israeli national anthem that glorifies the brutal Netanyahu government’s racism and violence in the name of security.

Lapid’s film is a scathing (yet bananas) satire of complicity, artistic co-optation, and blind, bigoted nationalism, packed with knockabout comedy and shocking tonal twists. A mad film for a mad world. 

‘Numbskull Revolution’

April 20, Space, 534 Congress St., Portland, space538.org.

For fans of Portland’s late, lamented video store Videoport (and especially its Incredibly Strange Films section), the name John Moritsugu rings out nearly as loud as legendary trash auteur John Waters. Often called the Godfather of Punk Cinema, Moritsugu’s deliberately low-fi, provocative, senses-assaulting underground films (“Mod F*** Explosion,” “My Degeneration,” “Fame Whore”) turn popular movie and TV genres inside out — only to shape something bizarrely fascinating out of the guts. His latest film stars longtime collaborators James Duval (“Donnie Darko’’’s Frank the Bunny) and Amy Davis as a pair of avant-garde dystopian artists in the post-apocalyptic S***ville, whose parallel drives for fame expose everything from art world posers to the decline of American civilization. 

Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and his cat.