Vera Dreams of the Sea is Kaltrina Krasniqi’s timely, subdued first feature; an engrossing look at patriarchal malignance and the untold costs of burying the dead.
Jacques Audiard’s plainspoken triptych Paris, 13th District is an easily digestible portrait of the convolutions of modern-day sex, love, and new relationships.
The legendary Japanese actor Kōji Yakusho invigorates Miwa Nishikawa’s Under the Open Sky, a sturdy but meandering adaptation of crime writer Ryūzō Saki’s novel “Mibuncho”.
In Athanor – The Alchemical Furnace, czech animator Jan Švankmajer makes for a fascinating subject in an otherwise routine about-the-artist documentary.