Six films over three nights, half of them documentaries and the other half features, make up the Third Annual Santa Barbara Human Rights Film Festival. All will be screened in Campbell Hall.

Opening today, May 27, at 7 p.m. will be “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a drama from Romania about two college students who set up an illegal abortion. Following that film at 9 p.m. is a suspenseful feature, “The Violin,” about an elderly Mexican farmer and musician who executes a plan to recover hidden weapons for a peasant guerilla movement the farmer secretly supports.

Day two, on Wednesday, May 28, shifts from drama and suspense to documentaries. The times of the film screenings remain the same: At 7 p.m. director Alex Gibney’s 2007 Oscar-nominated “Taxi to the Dark Side” will inquire into the suspicious death of an Afghani taxi driver at Bagram Air Base in 2002. At 9 p.m., Shimon Dotan’s Sundance prize-winning “Hot House” peers inside Israel’s highest security prisons and exposes how these institutions have political influence on the general Palestinian society.

Thursday, May 29, ends the series on a lighter note when Marjane Satrapi’s animated, semi-autobiographical feature “Persepolis” literally draws a black-and-white representation of a young girl’s life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. An Oscar nominee, the 7 p.m. film mixes humor and poignancy as changes force the girl to consider leaving her homeland.

At 9 p.m., Sean and Andrea Fine’s Oscar-nominated documentary “War/Dance” portrays the transformative experience of music and dance for three displaced children in civil war-divided northern Uganda.

Commenting on the variety of topics and issues represented by the festival selection, organizer Roman Baratiak, Arts & Lectures manager for films and lectures, says: “We try to serve a variety of constituencies, especially the students. So many films that deal with human rights issues—most of them documentaries—never get shown. This festival is an attempt, in a small way, to address this situation.”

Evening passes are $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students with IDs; festival passes cost $20 for general and $16 for students. For more details, go to <www.artsandlectures.ucsb.edu> or call x3535.