BEST ACTRESS: A CÉSAR-WINNER SHOWDOWN at the French Institute Alliance Française (through March 6). The annual Oscars relay goes into its final sprint Tuesday with the announcement of the nominations. In that spirit, the French Institute is hosting a series of films starring actresses who won the César, France’s equivalent of the Academy Award. The featured winners include Emmanuelle Riva in “Amour” (Jan. 30), Juliette Binoche in “Three Colors: Blue” (Feb. 6) and Catherine Deneuve in “The Last Metro” (Feb. 13). In this week’s film, Nathalie Baye plays the head of a Parisian police precinct’s criminal unit in “Le Petit Lieutenant” (Tuesday), a movie that Manohla Dargis called “tough, satisfying” and “an austere drama of the sort that rarely makes it to American screens except on cable television.”

800-982-2787, fiaf.org

‘HIROSHIMA’ at Japan Society (Jan. 19). Hideo Sekigawa’s 1953 film, an independent production that presents a dramatized look at the lives of survivors of the bomb, was perceived as anti-American and was shown in the United States in an edited version; according to Donald Richie, a scholar of Japanese cinema, some scenes were also included uncredited in the French director Alain Resnais’s great “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.” The movie will screen Friday at Japan Society as the first of a pair of atomic-themed movies. The original-language “Godzilla” will follow on Feb. 2.

212-832-1155, japansociety.org