So it's the long weekend—what better time could it be for a quick jaunt to a French-speaking country, right?

Well, for the rest of us (basically all of us) who can't afford such an indulgence, there's always DiverCiné, a film series presented at the Cinematheque (1131 Howe Street) and the Consulate General of France that offers a survey of the world of film from la Francophonie. The six selections at this year's DiverCiné (which starts today [March 29] and plays until Wednesday [April 3]) run the gamut from documentaries to comedy, and hail from countries as varied as Egypt, Senegal, France, Switzerland, Algeria, and Canada.

The sometimes-humorous The Virgin, the Copts and Me follows filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh's struggle to make a documentary about people who have claimed to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

The French dramedy Camille Rewinds (Camille redouble) sound a little like the CBC TV series Being Erica: a middle-aged actor on the verge of divorce finds herself back in 1985 and 16 years old again.

On a more serious note, the namesake of La Pirogue is a dinghy-style, flat-bottomed boat that 30 men use to make a perilous seven-day journey on the Atlantic from Senegal to Spain in Moussa Touré's dramatic feature that was selected for Cannes' Un Certain Regard.

Familial bonds are prominently featured in the other selections.

Another African drama, Yema (which means mother), captures a microcosm of Algeria's conflict, by focusing on a mother, grieving her soldier son, and whose other fundamentalist son may have been involved in his death.

Sister (L'enfant d'en haut) was Switzerland's official foreign language film submission for the Oscars. Simon, a 12-year-old thief, lives with his sometimes-absent, minimally employed older sister, at a ski-resort in the Swiss Alps. If you've been wondering what The X-Files' Gillian Anderson has been up to lately, you can catch her playing a mother that Simon meets in this film, who arouses .

The series closes with a Canadian selection: Camion by Montreal's Rafaël Ouellet. The drama follows the aftermath of a car accident, involving the death of a woman, on a truck driver. Even though he's not responsible, the emotional fallout debilitates him, his two sons, who have problems of their own, come to his aid. (The cast includes The Trotsky director Jacob Tierney.)

Ouellet was an editor and cinematographer for Quebec-based director Denis Côté. If you missed most of the recent Côté retrospective, Drifting States, at the Cinematheque, you've got one last shot at it. Côté's low-budget 2007 drama Our Private Lives screens on Wednesday (April 3).

For screening dates and times and other information, visit the Cinematheque website.