Film pick: Boston Latino International Film Festival

One of the more civilized tools of social change is cinema, and the Boston Latino International Film Festival is doing its part to calm the recent anti-immigrant hysteria by showing movies about the immigration experience. It opens today with Theo Rigby's documentary short "Without a Country," in which an undocumented Guatemalan family are arrested after living in the US for 17 years as productive, law-abiding citizens. Screening with it is The Peddler, Argentine director Eduardo de la Serna's documentary about a stranger who comes to a small village and engages the locals in making a film. That's at Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge | December 2 @ 6:45 pm [free reception 5:30 pm]; festival runs December 2-5 at various venues | $50 festival pass; $5-$10 per program | 617.495.3366 or bliff.org.