AS TOUGH TALK about an "axis of evil" comes rolling in monosyllables from Washington, D.C. – as if to promise that an even greater "excess" of it will emerge from there – a more subtle and life-affirming proposition awaits us in Berkeley, where the second half of the fifth annual "Cinemayaat, the Arab Film Festival," will finally be shown this weekend. The program prematurely concluded last year as a result of the events of Sept. 11. Now, Cinemayaat's ongoing effort to contribute to tolerance, understanding, and the pleasure of new discoveries has never seemed more valuable.

The fifth annual festival is the biggest yet, and 11 of the 18 films originally scheduled have been retained in the three-day program of documentaries, short subjects, and feature-length films. Highlights include entries from Morocco: a program of short subjects, Saad Chraibi's rich colonial drama Thirst (2000), and an engrossing documentary on the life and career of Mehdi Ben Barka. Simone Bitton's Ben Barka: The Moroccan Equation (2001) reaches into the past of one of Morocco's greatest and most controversial political figures, whose abduction and murder sparked the infamous "Ben Barka affair" of the 1960s. The film traces the extraordinary career of a gifted child from the slums of the Medina who earned Morocco's first degree in mathematics and became the tutor of the Moroccan prince, a leader in the movement to oust the French, and later an international organizer and intellectual of the third-world movement. Told dramatically in a traditional documentary style, the film uses interviews and archival newsreels and photographs in its cogent narrative, all punctuated by an indigenous musical score.

The intriguing full-length feature The Tornado, by Samir Habchi, from Lebanon, was originally released in 1992 and banned in most Arab countries. It's a dreamy meditation on violence, freedom, and moral decay that tells the story of an art student returning home to Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. He is appalled but finally corrupted by the barbarism around him. With a minimum of dialogue, Christian imagery, a lavish soundtrack, and a surrealist style, Habchi captures the claustrophobia and delirium of a city devolving into chaos.

Another highlight is Syrian auteur Mohammad Malas's exceptional documentary, The Dream, on the plight of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion. Malas is among the most intelligent and humanistic of filmmakers. His candid interviews trace the inner landscape of the people living in battle-scarred towns, their complex psychological responses to oppression, the resilience and torment in their dreams and aspirations. Malas's camera is compassionate, intimate, and inventive, and his idiosyncratic documentary has rare aesthetic and social force.

The festival opens with Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation (2000), an important, French-made documentary on the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the U.S. military in Iraq and Bosnia. Since the making of this film, of course, more such ordnance has been dropped on Afghanistan, thereby opening up a whole new population to its documented dangers. (Robert Avila)

The rescheduled portion of 'Cinemayaat, the Arab Film Festival' takes place Fri/8-Sun/10, Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 848-1143. For more information see First Runs, in Film listings, or go to www.aff.org.