An Oscar-winning documentary investigating detention and interrogation policies in the war on terror, and a winner of eight Israeli Film Academy Awards about an Egyptian police band’s journey when lost in Israel, are opening in local theaters this weekend.   

“Taxi to the Darkside” will be showing at the Main Art Theater, 118 North Main Street in Royal Oak, starting Friday.

“The Band’s Visit” will be playing at the Maple Art Theater, 4135 West Maple Road, Bloomfield Hill, also beginning Friday.

“Taxi to the Darkside” features an investigation into the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, exposing a Bush administration policy that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. 

It incorporates rare images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay prisons.

The film includes interviews with former government officials, interrogators, prison guards, reporters and the families of tortured prisoners, dissecting the progression of the policy on torture from the secret roles of key administration figures to the actions of soldiers in the field. 

In “The Band’s Visit,” the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives at the Israeli airport with no one there to greet them. 

Stranded and unable to contact their Israeli hosts or the Egyptian Consulate for help, the conductor Tewfiq decides that the orchestra will persevere.

He designates Khaled, a suave young ladies’ man, to ask for directions, only to end up in a small forgotten Israeli town in the desert, where the residents reluctantly put them up for the night. The film is in Arabic with subtitles.