Most of the buzz surrounding this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which comes to a close Sunday evening, has zeroed in on its red-carpet premieres. But only slightly less appreciated are the festival’s powerful and probing foreign entries, several of which offer an unprecedented view of events that altered the course of the future.

Atop the roster is Mohammad Rasoulof’s “Head Wind” (showing Fri., Sat., Sun.), a documentary doubling as a case study of how democracy is taking root in the Middle East through the adoption of technology, as the younger generation works its way around the oppressive propaganda of tyrannical governments.

A case in point concerns the cheap, flimsy satellite dishes that pop up throughout Mr. Rasoulof’s film and are bought and sold illegally all across Iran. As he travels to remote villages, major cities, even to individuals living in tents in the desert, Mr. Rasoulof shows how one satellite and a pinch of electricity can bridge the modern and the fundamentalist. With the flip of a switch, people who have been denied access to the world at large are suddenly overwhelmed by music, news, and opinions spanning the globe.

Of course, there is dissent among the Iranian population, most of which knows nothing more than its government’s crippling isolationist policy. In one village Mr. Rasoulof visits, the men are allowed to watch television, but the women are not. In a dramatic touch evoking his fellow documentarian Errol Morris, the director goes so far as to re-create raids in which government agents storm apartment complexes and stomp the satellite dishes.

Many Iranians, however, are not deterred. Out in the desert, Mr. Rasoulof allows us to marvel at the ingenuity of the man who powers his cell phone with his car battery, his television and satellite dish with a portable generator; he is as connected to the outside world as just about any New Yorker. Later, in an urban area, Mr. Rasoulof listens as a young girl describes how adults love the entertainment made possible by satellites but remain unaware of their own ability to generate electronic communication. As she navigates the Internet, smiling in the glow of her computer monitor, we watch as technology empowers a generation to break free of ignorance one mouse click at a time.

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If “Head Wind” is about a society gradually moving forward, then Kief Davidson’s “Kassim the Dream” (showing Sat.) is about a former child soldier of Uganda working backward as he tries to reconcile the horrors of his past.

Mr. Davidson spent two years getting to know Kassim “The Dream” Ouma, whom some will recognize as the former world junior-middleweight boxing champion.

“It took two years to really get to know him,” Mr. Davidson said. “But the closer I got, the more I saw the conflict in him. It would have been so easy to make a fluff piece about this great boxer who returns home to cope with his inner demons. But while I believe Kassim has a huge heart and is trying to do great things for Uganda, there are limitations for him — a dark side from his past you don’t see right away.”

Starting in the boxing ring before shedding light on the killing fields in Kassim’s past, Mr. Davidson gingerly reconstructs the dark years of his subject’s life. He was abducted at age 6 by the rebel army of Yoweri Museveni and forced for 12 years to slaughter men and women across Uganda in a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of Ugandan lives. His saving grace was to be discovered on the army’s boxing team — a hobby that Kassim refers to as his “therapy.” He fled to America in 1998.

The stakes are raised when Kassim decides to return home to see his family — a visit that will only be possible if the Ugandan government pardons him for his past crimes. Traveling with Kassim on his harrowing six-day trip, Mr. Davidson cuts through the third-person testimonials, archival footage, and objectivity that one might expect to buffer a film of this nature.

“It was a roller coaster, those six days, and at that point in Africa he definitely forgot that the cameras were there,” Mr. Davidson said. “And we reached a point where we

had to get involved. We desperately wanted him to be pardoned; we talked to the ambassador. It wasn’t just a film anymore, but a mission.”

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Michael Christoffersen’s commitment to his subject can be measured not in years but in hours — 2,000 of them.

That’s how much footage the director of “Milosevic on Trial” (showing Fri. and Sat.) had to wade through to fully understand the story of Slobodan Milosevic’s trial before the Hague Tribunal for crimes against humanity. Poring over some 120,000 minutes of footage — that’s 83 full days of video — Mr. Christoffersen immersed himself in this unprecedented trial of the former Serbian president, following the first case of its kind as it spanned various judges and lawyers and continued through numerous dramas involving witnesses recanting their statements and Milosevic’s own efforts to obstruct the process at every step.

Beyond the genuine melodrama of the courtroom, Mr. Christoffersen was there to interview the trial’s lawyers and observers as the three-ring circus unfolded.

“It brought it to life in a whole new way, to be there all the time,” Mr. Christoffersen said. “It helped, since we weren’t re-creating the moment, or asking people to re-enact the moment. We were there, in the hallways, close to the key players. You start to get a sense of how massive and frustrating this whole thing was.”

More than a surreal courtroom drama, “Milosevic on Trial” offers a vivid survey of the atrocities perpetrated by Milosevic’s Serbian government, but its true purpose is to provide a glimpse of the inner workings of the international court and a cumbersome legal process that is far larger than any one man.

“We wanted to show the breadth and the scope of this,” Mr. Christoffersen said. “This is the first time we’re getting a good look backstage. It’s part of globalization, this way of dealing with conflicts and criminals, and it’s very debatable about whether that’s good or bad, but we simply wanted to get a good look at what exactly is going on here.”

ssnyder@nysun.com