One assumes first-time filmmakers would be preoccupied with winning over critics and endearing themselves to audiences. But in digging through the schedule of this year’s New Directors/ New Films program — set to return to Lincoln Center next week — one discovers a crop of first-timers who have almost all set out to assert themselves in a notably different way: by denying us a hero. “If you look at this class of films, one thing that really impressed me about the lot was the willingness of so many directors to create central characters who are off-putting, or even unlikable,” said ND/NF co-curator Richard Peña, the program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. “It’s so typical for filmmakers early in their career to create characters who will warm our hearts … but there’s something challenging and fascinating happening this year, where you have this real creep at the center of it all, being thrown in our face.”

Sample even a few of this year’s official ND/NF selections, and you’ll quickly start to appreciate what Mr. Peña describes. Even the ND/NF opening night selection — Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River,” winner of this year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival — is fixated on two fantastically flawed heroines, smugglers of illegal immigrants in upstate New York who drive their charges into the country from Canada across a frozen St. Lawrence River.

“Frozen River” is scheduled to screen a week from Wednesday (with an additional screening on March 27), and it hails the beginning of the 37th year for the ND/ NF event, which runs through April 6. Behind the scenes, this year’s series is most notable for the addition of a new programmer: Rajendra Roy, the new chief curator of the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, who finalized this year’s selections along with Mr. Peña and colleagues Jytte Jensen, Laurence Kardish, Marian Masone, and Joanna Ney.

Collectively, Mr. Peña said, he and his colleagues have always favored films that dare to take the big risks. “At most festivals, the focus is on finished works of art with high ambitions, but here the focus is on the new artist creating films that sometimes aren’t entirely successful but are always exciting,” he said. “They are brave enough to try new things, expose audiences to new ideas, work with entirely new ideas. It’s a high-wire act, and sometimes they fall — but that’s what makes it exciting.”

He points to Lance Hammer and his first feature, “Ballast” (March 29–30), as one title in particular that defies the conventional rules of perspective, as audiences are never quite sure where to direct their attention, or their emotions. Hailed by numerous critics when it made its premiere at Sundance, “Ballast” is the story of a suicide’s aftermath and the ways in which one violent act forever changes the lives of a brother, a girlfriend, and her son — all characters brought to life by nonprofessional actors.

Rodrigo Plá’s “La Zona” (April 4 and 6) similarly depicts everyday people caught in extreme situations. Focusing on a gated Spanish community that is fenced off from the surrounding slums, the movie begins with a few outsiders finding a way to sneak over the electrified wall that surrounds “The Zone”; it then explodes as these privileged few become terrified for their safety and empower a militia to roam the streets on nightly search-and-destroy missions.

Much like Mr. Plá’s reactionaries, the two men of Danielle Arbid’s “A Lost Man” (April 5–6) seem all but disconnected from reality. The movie tells the story of a most unlikely meeting between two eccentrics. Fouad is a man still shell-shocked from his experiences during the Lebanese civil war, an almost silent observer who doesn’t so much participate in life as watch from the sidelines. Thomas, meanwhile, claims to be a French photographer, seducing women night after night during his sordid journey with Fouad across the Middle East, photographing every second of his sexual encounters — trysts that are forbidden by local cultures. Yet the sex — graphic and at times violent — only amplifies the mystery of who these men are, and why they are here.

The erotic tension of “A Lost Man” is almost matched by Céline Sciamma’s “Water Lilies” (March 28 and 30), which tells the story of three sexually frustrated teenagers, all members of an amateur synchronized swim team. One of the girls is overweight and finds it impossible to seduce the man of her dreams, while another is slowly coming to the realization that she’s gay, becoming obsessed with a third girl who reciprocates her flirtations while nevertheless continuing to chase after boys herself. It’s both enticing and haunting, an enigmatic love triangle in which platonic friendship, sexual experimentation, and raw lust collide.

Late last week, organizers said that while tickets had been selling briskly, only a few events had sold out. As of Sunday, tickets were still available for the special March 30 “HBO Films Roundtable” event, at which a handful of successful ND/NF alums, such as Tamara Jenkins (“The Savages”) and Lodge Kerrigan (“Keane”), will be honored. For more information on this year’s ND/NF series, or to purchase tickets, visit www.filmlinc.com/ndnf.

ssnyder@nysun.com