Every spring, the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center present New Yorkers with the cinematic miscellany known as New Directors/New Films. This year’s program of movies, many gleaned from the international festival circuit, runs the gamut from the glorious to the grim and includes works of socially conscious realism, historical fantasy and experimental documentary. Our chief film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, offer these highlights.
‘Angelo’
Some time in the 18th century, a young African boy is purchased by a European noblewoman and subjected to a curious form of enslavement. Given the name Angelo, he grows up among aristocrats who treat him not as a servant but as a curio and a symbol of their own benevolence. Angelo’s biography feels like both a plausibly factual chronicle and a fantastical allegory. Shot with classical rigor and attention to detail (with room for a few telling anachronisms), Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer’s second feature presents history as a lavish, lucid nightmare from which nobody, Angelo least of all, can hope to awaken.
— A.O. Scott
‘Belonging’
A tale twice told, the ingenious Turkish puzzle “Belonging” opens with an unseen narrator introducing the story and then another voice delivering a just-the-facts description of a murder. Detailed, largely affectless and sometimes rushed, this recitation accompanies images that initially seem completely unrelated, even random. In time, though, words and images begin syncing up — we hear “the security chain was locked” over a shot of a safety chain lock — creating a seamless correspondence between what we hear and see. Writer-director Burak Cevik then flips the switch and the movie shifts into a more lyrical narrative register, one that fills in all the little nuances, most notably the intimate in-between moments that both explain and obscure so much.
— Manohla Dargis
‘The Chambermaid’
Lila Avilés’ debut feature never leaves the high-rise Mexico City hotel where its title character, Eve (Gabriela Cartol), works long hours cleaning rooms with spectacular views. The effect of is claustrophobic, but also strangely serene, even sublime. The camera follows Eve through daily routines that include awkward encounters with guests, friendly exchanges with co-workers and curt meetings with supervisors. Our sense of exploitation and alienation is palpable, but the moments of beauty, tenderness and freedom that punctuate the drudgery provide flickers of humanity that feel almost miraculous.
— A.O. Scott
‘Clemency’
Chinonye Chukwu’s film, which opens New Directors, is a somber, ethically serious consideration of the death penalty. It’s an issue movie that wants to be thought-provoking rather than polemical. It is also a showcase for the formidable talents of Alfre Woodard, who plays the warden of a prison where executions are a regular part of life. As the next one approaches (the condemned man is played by Aldis Hodge), the warden struggles with emotions that threaten every aspect of her identity, professional and personal. Woodard enacts this struggle with minimal vanity and abundant grace.
— A.O. Scott
‘A Family Submerged’
In 2004, María Alché appeared in “The Holy Girl,” Argentine director Lucrecia Martel’s haunting second feature. Fifteen years later, Alché's directing debut shows signs of Martel’s influence in its blend of oblique narration and subtle psychological insight. But Alché, who is also an accomplished photographer, brings her own arresting visual sensibility to this story of grief, longing and memory. Mercedes Moran plays a middle-age mother of three almost-grown children who is thrown off balance by the death of her sister. During her mourning period, nothing much happens, and yet everything happens, as Alché and Moran practice a kind of emotional sonar, picking up signals that lie deep under the dramatic surface.
— A.O. Scott
‘Honeyland’
The documentary “Honeyland” contains worlds in one beautiful, seemingly simple story. Its focus, Hatidze Muratova, lives in a tiny stone house in remote Northern Macedonia with her octogenarian mother, a plucky dog and an irregular number of cats. Her passion and apparent livelihood, though, are the wild bees she tends — beekeeping is too possessive — with hand flaps, vocalizations and deep respect. Directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska don’t overexplain this world, its history or seemingly fragile present, including the origin of the chaotic, sprawling family who soon moves in and begins taking over the bees. The family’s at times infuriating disruptions (animal lovers beware) turn this quiet, moving observational documentary into a heart-skipping thriller as well as a perfect encapsulation of humanity’s catastrophic domination of nature.
— Manohla Dargis
‘The Load’
During the Kosovo war in 1999, against a backdrop of NATO bombardment, a Serbian truck driver (Leon Lucev), transports a mysterious cargo toward Belgrade. He gives a ride to a young man whose reasons for traveling are equally enigmatic, and the two of them make their way across a chilly, drab landscape in this mordant, minimalist road picture, directed by Ognjen Glavonic, who leavens the journey with hints of suspense and glints of absurdist humor. This isn’t “The Wages of Fear” so much as the dividends of existential anxiety and political despair.
— A.O. Scott
‘Midnight Family’
If it bleeds, it leads — and pays the bills. That’s the uneasy truism and slow-boiling moral of the gripping documentary “Midnight Family,” about a household of ambulance workers. The title isn’t metaphoric (or not exactly), but refers to the Ochoas, who operate one of the many private ambulances that race through Mexico City. Fantastically shot by director Luke Lorentzen, the documentary develops an urgency that suits the life-or-death stakes on-screen. By turns terrifying and exhilarating, “Midnight Family” unfolds with such velocity that it may take a while for your ethical doubts to catch up to what’s happening. When they do, they leave you gasping.
— Manohla Dargis
‘Monos’
The pig’s head on a stick, posted in a jungle encampment occupied by a pack of feral children, pays obvious homage to “Lord of the Flies.” But Alejandro Landes’ “Monos” infuses the themes of that schoolboy parable with a grim, contemporary political perspective and filters them through cinematic influences that include Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog. The kids are members of a guerrilla army in the Colombian countryside. Their mission is to guard an American hostage played by Julianne Nicholson. A lot goes wrong. As the action shifts from mountains to rainforest, Landes makes clever use of drone-mounted cameras and trippy sound design to turn the natural world into a hallucination. Unless the human characters are figments dreamed up by the landscape.
— A.O. Scott
‘Share’
When 16-year-old Mandy (an appealing Rhianne Barreto) wakes up on her family’s front lawn one dark day, she finds herself with no memory of and a body marred with wounds. The question of what happened — as well as why, who and where — reverberates through this thoughtful, low-key drama which tracks Mandy’s anguish and anger as a personal trauma increasingly becomes an exploitative public spectacle. As Mandy fights to recover her memory, she struggles with her fears, family and friends, growing progressively more isolated. Making a fine feature debut, the American Pippa Bianco uses a depressingly familiar story of high-school partying gone wrong to explore sometimes uncomfortable questions about gender, agency and collective guilt.
— Manohla Dargis
‘Suburban Birds’
Time bends in this sly, often-lovely drama, which pivots on a young surveyor whose past catches up with him while he’s out in the field. At one point, he walks into a seemingly deserted classroom, initiating an enigmatic journey into the past that keeps bumping into the present. Using splashes of primary color, punctuating zooms, visual echoes and narrative ellipses, Chinese writer-director Qiu Sheng puts a fresh gloss on Faulkner’s observation that the past is never dead. It’s always here, vibrating in every red scarf, bird song and moment. “Suburban Birds” will open soon, but is so good — and delightfully kinked — that it’s well worth catching now (and watching twice).
— Manohla Dargis
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More information is at newdirectors.org.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.