MEET Judy and Lola. The women share opening-night honors at the 28th annual New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art.

Curated by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the international film showcase runs from tomorrow through April 11 and features 28 films from 19 countries.

Last year, “Smoke Signals,” “Buffalo ’66” and the devastating French travelogue “See the Sea” had their Gotham premieres at New Directors.

Tomorrow, “Judy Berlin” and “Run Lola Run” play the museum’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater buoyed by strong buzz from previous festivals.

One’s hip, the other’s unfashionably hopeful; both are crowd pleasers.

Eric Mendelsohn’s gentle “Berlin” (tonight at 6, tomorrow at 6:30 p.m.) earned the Long Islander Best Director honors at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

The black-and-white comedy traces one fateful day in suburban Babylon, L.I.

When a solar eclipse darkens their neighborhood, an actress (Edie Falco), a filmmaker (Aaron Harnick), an elementary-school teacher (Barbara Barrie), her principal (Bob Dishy) and his wife (Madeline Kahn) all see their lives in a new light.

“Run Lola Run” (tonight at 9, tomorrow at 1 p.m.) is German director Tom Tykwer’s ecstatic, post-MTV, postmodern romance.

Lola (the potent Franka Potente) is a wiry, flame-haired punk. To save her beloved boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), Lola has 20 minutes to score 100,000 marks. Lola runs for Manni’s life in three real-time vignettes that put the antic in romantic.

While Judy and Lola couldn’t be more different, both headstrong women provide a center of gravity in a world where fate hangs in the balance, vulnerable to a stray bullet, an eclipse or a chance encounter.

Coincidences and fateful encounters drive Julio Medem’s seductive “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” (April 7 at 9 p.m.; April 8 at 6 p.m.). The Spanish director fractures the narrative, and our hearts, shifting in time to tell a star-crossed love story.

“Dribbling Fate” (April 4 at 6 p.m., April 6 at 8:30 p.m.) makes waves as the first film from the Cape Verde Islands. It also explores destiny. Told through an aging barkeep’s eyes, the drama examines the man’s critical choice as a young soccer star between leaving Cape Verde to play professional soccer and remaining island-bound.

The belated coming-of-age story transports us to an exotic landscape using a universal structure.

Ditto “West Beirut” (Saturday at 6 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.). Set in war-torn Lebanon, Ziad Doueiri’s appealing drama captures a Muslim teen’s introduction to sex, cigarettes and AK-47s as his cosmopolitan capital rips apart and family ties fray.

Kinky sex dominates “Of Freaks and Men” (Saturday at 9 p.m., Sunday at 12:15 p.m.). This year’s offering from Russian Alexei Balabanov (“Brother”) makes flagellation fun again, while tortured couplings rage in “Passion” (Tuesday at 8:30 p.m., Wednesday at 6 p.m.), Hungarian Gyorgy Feher’s mud-drenched version of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

The festival’s most controversial film will be Francois Ozon’s “Sitcom.” This Gallic “Happiness” from the French enfant terrible responsible for last year’s shocker “See the Sea” exploits the American situation comedy for all its incestuous and sexually grotesque possibilities. No channel surfing allowed.

For more information on the series, call (212) 708-9500.