After 27 years, Filmfest D.C.—one of the region’s biggest independent and foreign film festival—will be coming to an end. A press release says that this year’s festival, the 28th one, will be its final year.

But the end of the festivals is not a sudden shock. Last year, festival director Tony Gittens spoke to the Post’s Ann Hornaday about the festival’s financial woes, saying that “[they] started adding up the numbers and said, ‘We can’t do this again.’ ” Gittens told the City Paper that the festival is currently “projecting a $250,000 funding deficit for a 2015 festival,” and that they had to pull many strings just to get this year’s festival planned. Although this year’s festival is being billed as its last, there’s always the slight possibility that a loaded generous donor could come the rescue with a $250,000 check. “My board reminds me there’s always a possibility. No one’s stepped us as yet,” Gittens says.

At any rate, this year’s festival will take place from April 17 to 27, at a variety of locations around the D.C. area, including Landmark’s Bethesda Row cinema as a new venue. The full lineup hasn’t been announced yet, but here’s what films have been announced so far:

• 11.6 (France) directed by Philippe Gadeau. How is it a security guard with an impeccable record transporting huge sums of money for ten years vanishes into thin air?
• Act Zero (India) directed by Goutam Ghose. A corporate high-flier is sent to the hinterland to clear tribal villages for a mining project. There he meets an intrepid journalist and growing Maoist violence.
• Cold Eyes (South Korea) directed by Cho Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo. A gripping film, which centers on the world of modern surveillance and its utility for both fighting crime and committing it.
• From Tehran to Heaven (Iran/Germany) directed by Abolfazl Saffary. A woman’s desperate search to find her husband after being abducted and threatened. But strange things happen along the way.
• The Keeper of Loss Causes (Denmark) directed by Mikkel Norgaad. A dose of Nordic noir taking you into the undercurrents of malice that lurks beneath the polished surface of Scandinavia.
• The Grand Seduction (Canada) directed by Don McKellar is a comedy involving residents of a quaint Newfoundland fishing village conspiring to convince a big-city doctor into becoming the town’s physician.
• The Noble Family (Mexico) directed by Gary Alazraki follows wealthy tycoon Germain Noble as he fakes his company’s bankruptcy to force his spoiled children to live within their means.
• My Sweet Pepper Land (France/Germany/Kurdistan) directed by Hiner Saleem and winner of the Special Jury Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival is a delightful takeoff on the cowboy movie set in Iraq Kurdistan near the borders of Iran and Turkey.
• Viva la Liberta (Italy) by Roberto Ando. When opposition party leader Enrico is depressed and leaves one night without a trace, party leadership turns to his twin brother to hold things together.
• Love and Lemons (Sweden) directed by Teresa Fabik. A romantic comedy about love, friendship and the courage to follow your dreams.
• Le Chef (France) directed by Daniel Cohen. Pokes fun at the restaurant world while dishing up easily digestible laughs.
• Romantic Brasserie (Belgium) by Joel Vanhoebrouck. Pascaline runs a stylish brasserie and on Valentine’s Day her old flame from 20 years ago suddenly reappears and asks her to leave right now for Rio.
• Paulette (France) by Michael Ewins. French New Wave legend Bernadette Lafont in an uproariously non-PC baking-and-drugs farce, and if that hasn’t sold you, what will?
• Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine by Connie Fields. The glorious strains of gospel music wash over the West Bank as an African American choir mounts a touring play about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• La Jaula de Oro (Mexico) by Diego Quemada-Diez. Juan, Sara and Samuel, all 15 years old, flee from Guatemala toward the USA without official documents, but they run into harsh realities.
• Lakshmi (India) directed by Nagesh Kukunoor. A young victim takes a stand against human trafficking and child prostitution in rural parts of India.
• Bad Hair (Venezuela) by Mariana Rondon. Nine-year-old Junior aches to straighten his luxurious dark curls to look like his fantasy image of himself as a longhaired singer.
• King Ordinary (Germany) directed by David Dietl. Follows the life of how far one average man will go into the game of deception.
• Gare Du Nord (France) directed by Claire Simon. In this iconic European train station we find a multicultural breeding ground of people who haven’t given up looking for something better.
• Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (USA) by Nicholas Wrathall. Eternally opinionated, brilliantly funny and terminally political, Gore Vidal – novelist, essayist, polemicist, politician, pundit, screenwriter – was the true unpredictable man.
• Rock the Casbah (France/Morocco) by Fatima Harandi. A bittersweet comedy that plays out around a funeral. Over the three days of mourning by Moroccan tradition, the family gathers in the deceased’s villa to share the loss and memories of their dearly departed father and husband.
• Something Necessary (Kenya) by Judy Kibinge. In the aftermath of the ethnic and political tensions in Kenya, Anne, a nurse and mother, awakens from a coma to find that her once idyllic life will never be the same.
• The Great Passage (Japan) directed by Ishi Yuya. Illustrates the power of words as Mitsuya helps edit a new dictionary, but finds himself distracted by his landlord’s beautiful granddaughter.
• Ilo Ilo (Singapore) directed by Anthony Chen. The first Singaporean feature film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
• Ladder to Damascus (Syria/Lebanon/Qatar) directed by Mohamed Malas is an intense drama shot in Damascus months after the outbreak of the 2011 insurgency that combines fiction and documentary.
• White Lies (New Zealand) directed by Dana Rotberg. A Moori healer faces a difficult ethical dilemma as she tries to help a settler’s wife.