'Highway Courtesans'

(4 stars)

Mystelle Brabée's thoughtful and sure-handed documentary tells the story of Guddi, a young woman from rural India who is born into a village where prostitution has been a way of life for centuries. We follow Guddi for several years and learn about life in "the profession" and the extraordinary challenges she faces in leaving it. But we also see her in situations familiar to any young woman: giggling over a guy she likes, trying to get over a bad boyfriend, changing her hairstyle. She and her friends are sad and pragmatic, but never defeated. Finding ways to be ordinary in their world must take extraordinary courage.

2 p.m. March 13, Austin Convention Center; 4:15 March 17, Alamo Downtown.

— Sarah Lindner

'Code: 33'

(3 stars)

Stripped of the baroque sensationalism of "Cops" or crisp narrative architecture of "CSI," police procedurals can be anesthesizing. In the summer of 2003, a serial rapist terrorized a Latino area of Miami, his six female victims ranging in age from 11 to 79. The police investigation by two Miami detectives is the subject of this alternately ordinary and absorbing documentary — it's cops, not "Cops" — which gets over a poky start by nailing a satisfying resolution that's as clinically fascinating as it is emotional and human. The film's quartet of directors prove as dogged as the police, capturing the burly detectives' sometimes troubling tactics, distressed 911 emergency calls and the marvel of DNA linking. Within the hunt, there are also glimpses of immigrant life and the ways in which the media can bump heads with law enforcement. Lolling at the pace of reality, the movie spikes with tension before an agonizing payoff that dares us to empathize with a trembling, crying, dead-guilty sociopath.

7 p.m. March 13 at the Austin Convention Center; 9 p.m. March 16 and 4:30 p.m. March 17 at the Alamo South.

— Chris Garcia