How to read a file in other directory in python

Looks like you are trying to open a directory for reading as if it’s a regular file. Many OSs won’t let you do that. You don’t need to anyway, because what you want (judging from your description) is

x_file = open(os.path.join(direct, "5_1.txt"), "r")  

or simply

x_file = open(direct+"/5_1.txt", "r")