TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL

F ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. Information: (213) 466-1767. Highly Recommended:

“NIGHT SUN”(Italy/France/Germany; Paolo & Vittorio Taviani; Nuart, 6:45 p.m.). In this ravishing film, a leisurely and poignant meditation on the paradoxical nature of saintliness, the Taviani Brothers (“Padre, Padrone,” “Night of the Shooting Stars”) transpose Tolstoy’s short story “Father Sergius” to Italy. Julian Sands is splendid as a young 19th-Century nobleman on a harrowing spiritual odyssey. “THE STING OF DEATH”(Japan; Kohei Oguri; Music Hall, 9 p.m.). An implacable story of a disintegrating marriage, by Kohei Oguri (“Muddy River”). The film--a Cannes double prize-winner--has awe-inspiring performances by Keiko Matsuzaka and Ittoku Kishibe, as a wife raging against her mate’s infidelity and the maddeningly impassive spouse; it makes a penetrating commentary on Japanese torment a decade after the war.

“LATINO BAR”(Venezuela/Spain; Paul Leduc; Nuart, 9 p.m.). Leduc’s wordless tale of love and death is an entrancingly sensual, poetic experience set in a Maracaibo waterfront dive and accompanied by lush, incessant tropical music. Eloquent as a ballet, it stars sinuous, wondrously expressive Dolores Pedro and fresh, ingenuous Roberto Sosa as doomed lovers.