For her eagerly-anticipated followup to the 2017 genre-hopping lesbian werewolf opus Good Manners (co-directed by Marco Dutra), preeminent Brazilian filmmaker Juliana Rojas conjures a transfixing diptych exploring the divides between urban and rural, past and present, and tangible and metaphysical. In the beguiling first half, Joana (Fernanda Vianna), haunted by the disappearance of her son, emigrates to Sāo Paulo to live with her sister Tânia and Tânia’s grandchild Jaime after a flood wipes out her town and livelihood. There she enters into the domestic workforce of the big city, with lasting reverberations.

In the second part (which features one of the best lesbian sex scenes we’ve seen onscreen in a long time), Flávia (Mirella Façanha) arrives at her late, estranged father’s farm with her wife Mara (the mesmerizing Bruna Linzmeyer of A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here, Frameline46). As both struggle to adapt to life in the countryside, Flávia begins to suspect there is something lurking in the surrounding wilderness. Rojas, who took home the Encounters Award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival, infuses her trademark atmosphere and mystique into a tale of a universe in flux, one as much about endings as rebirths, and how the cycle of life continues, sometimes mutating into new, inconceivable forms.