The 42nd San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) begins today, bringing to Bay Area viewers narratives, documentary and short films from 57 countries, including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Few Asian American films are premiering, even though the festival last year presented two widely anticipated features by Asian Americans—Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box and Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu. The absence of Asian American titles is attributed to a number of factors, explained Rachel Rosen, the San Francisco Film Society’s associate director of programming. First, the SFIFF does not usually consider films that have already screened in the Bay Area. And timing also affects the availability of movies in any given year, based on production and distribution schedules, she said.

“Ideally, we have a mixture of both [Asian and Asian American films],” Rosen conceded, adding that circumstances don’t always allow for such diversity.

As a result, non-Asian perspectives of Asia are represented in this year’s SFIFF by two award-winning Sundance Film Festival documentaries. Barbara Sonneborn’s Regret To Inform earned the Sundance Director’s Award and an Oscar nomination for its wrenching but cathartic depiction of the Vietnam War’s impact on war widows. Roko Belic’s freewheeling Genghis Blues won the Sundance Audience Award for its offbeat portrayal of blind blues musician Paul Pena’s journey to collaborate with traditional throat singers in the remote Siberian region of Tuva.

The festival’s Asiam films cover a wide range of topics and styles, from drama and documentary, to animation and comedy. Japanese selections include Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, which depicts the experiences of the recently deceased as they select a single happy memory to carry with them through eternity. Kore-eda, director of Maborosi (1996), combines narrative and documentary styles in envisioning the afterlife as a movie set, where memories are re-staged and filmed for later enjoyment by the departed.

Hiroshi Shimiza, in his debut feature, Ikinai, delivers an understated black comedy about an attempted insurance scam by a busload of debtors planning collective suicide. Their careful scheme goes awry, however, when a vivacious young woman unexpectedly joins the group and questions their self-destructive motives.

Another debut, Koki Mitani’s Welcome Back Mr. McDonald, takes comedy to a new level with a film that focuses on the staging of a live radio drama that veers when the lead actress decides to change the script shortly before air time. The cast is thrown into a flurry of improvisation in its attempts to keep up, sending this screwball comedy off in unexpected directions.

The festival pays tribute to legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa by screening Dersu Uzala (1974), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The tale of a Russian surveyor who is rescued by a native Siberian, the film is an enduring testament to loyalty and friendship, taking place in the lyrical wilderness of Siberia.

My Father’s Dragon, a delightful adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book, recounts the animated adventures of young Elmer Elevator, who sets off to Wild Island on a mission to rescue a blue-and-yellow striped dragon held captive. Director Masami Hata skillfully evokes thrills as Elmer and the dragon confront lions, tigers and other wild beasts in this entertaining yarn.

Another animated feature, Grandma and Her Ghosts from Taiwan, is suitable for children who can tolerate a bit of a fright. When young Dou Dou is unceremoniously dumped at Grandma’s at the beginning of the lunar “ghost month,” he inadvertently sets loose the scariest spirit in the house and must help his grandmother retrieve the malevolent wraith and send it back through to the afterlife.

Two divergent films illustrate the range of contemporary Chinese views of the Mainland. A China-Hong Kong co-production, Xiao Wu is a low-budget feature debut by director Jia Zhang Ke that uses unsentimental realism to obliquely dissect the hardscrabble existence of a petty thief and stubborn loner. Using an amateur cast, Xiao Wu provides an unsettling glimpse of China’s rapidly modernizing outer provinces.

At the other end of the production spectrum, Flowers of Shanghai, a gorgeously photographed period drama from Taiwan, portrays the liaisons of rich men and beautiful “flower girls” in the opulent brothels of late-19th century Shanghai. Director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s stately camerawork and sumptuous production design create a hypnotic spectacle of love and betrayal, fraught with courtly intrigue.

Also from Taiwan, Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole reprises the themes of alienation and emotional claustrophobia seen in some of the director’s previous films (Vive L’Amour, The River). In this film, a man and woman inadvertently quarantined in a Taipei apartment building in the midst of a plague must find a way to survive, and in the process rediscover their compassion and humanity.

The stereotypical Hong Kong gangster drama gets an atypical treatment in Wong Jing’s A True Mob Story, an adaptation of one man’s actual experience trying to balance his duty as a triad soldier with his attempts at a normal existence. Starring movie idol Andy Lau, the film is an unglamorous, graphic look at a life undone by violence and organized crime.

Korea is represented in the festival by The Power of Kangwon Province, Hong Soo-Soo’s nostalgic feature set in a vacation resort, where two former lovers separately try to pursue a relaxing holiday. In intertwined storylines, Sangkwon, a university professor, and graduate student Jisook unsuccessfully attempt to escape their past disappointments, only to discover that the sadness they feel can’t be assuaged by a simple weekend getaway.

A selection of features and documentaries vividly captures the remarkable breadth of Indian culture and history. Philippe Gautier’s Hathi is a naturalistic rural tale of a working elephant and the trainer who must give him up as the forests of southern India disappear.

The documentary Battu’s Bioscope follows Mr. Battu’s itinerant “Bollywood” movie-theater-on-wheels as the impresario brings enchantment and amusement to the poverty-stricken backlands.

India’s complicated political landscape is limned by Santosh Sivan in The Terrorist, a loose adaptation of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi. Malli, a young revolutionary woman, is chosen for a suicide bombing mission, but begins to reconsider her impending martyrdom when she discovers she is pregnant.

SFIFF’s Rosen expressed her satisfaction with this year’s selection of films from Asia. “I don’t think there’s an Asian film that I fell in love with that we didn’t get a chance to show,” she said. For festivalgoers as well, it’s an annual opportunity to renew their love affair with Asian films.