The Maine International Film Festival launches its winter film series on Saturday through March 22. The films will be shown at 10 a.m. on several Saturdays and Sundays at Railroad Square Cinema.

The “MIFF in the Morning 2009″ winter series helps raise funds for the annual film festival held for the last 11 years in the summer at both Railroad Square and the Waterville Opera House.

The winter series of six films begins Saturday and Sunday with “Dalai Lama Renaissance,” a movie about more than 40 intellectuals from the U.S., Europe and Asia who go to India to see the Dalai Lama.

Showing January 24 and 25 is “The Silence Before Bach,” the only winter film offering that already has been shown at the summer film festival. It was one of the biggest surprise hits of last year’s event, Sanborn said.

“El Bano Del Papa (The Pope’s Toilet)” shows Feb. 7 and 8. Set in 1988 in Uruguay, the film tells the story of the hardscrabble town of Melo on the Brazilian border which awaits a visit from Pope John Paul II. Beto, a smuggler, thinks he can earn some money by building a restroom in front of his house to accommodate the 50,000 people expected to converge on the town.

“Trouble the Water” is scheduled for Feb. 21 and 22. It is a documentary about a couple who survive Hurricane Katrina, trapped in their attic, and they film much of their ordeal.

On March 7 and 8 “The Third Man,” a classic movie filmed in Vienna, Austria, about 60 years ago, will be shown. The film, featuring Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli and Joseph Cotten, was chosen by the American Film Institute as the fifth-best mystery film of all time.

The last film of the series is “Huey: The Evolution of a Maine Filmmaker,” to be shown March 21 and 22. [via]