That Ms. Farahani found Mr. Mohassess and persuaded him to share his story is a terrific coup, even if a great deal of his life's work remains elusive.

Moment by moment, with a twitch, a shudder, a look, it’s Mr. Hardy who movingly draws you in, turning a stranger’s face into a life.

American commercial cinema has long been dominated by men, but I don’t think there has ever been another time when women have been as underrepresented on screen as they are now. The biggest problem isn’t genuinely independent cinema, where lower budgets mean more opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera. The problem is the six major studios that dominate the box office, the entertainment chatter and the popular imagination. Their refusal to hire more female directors is immoral, maybe illegal, and has helped create and sustain a representational ghetto for women.

The New World is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). There is some intense, bloodless violence and the beautiful underage lead actress (15-year-old Q'orianka Kilcher) may cause cardiac arrest among some viewers.

An acquired taste, this dense Jabberwocky-ish word salad is a political allegory about a populace that's been pharmaceutically duped into believing its wretched world is wonderful.

By focusing on such a narrow slice of Nepali life, Ms. Spray and Mr. Velez have ceded any totalizing claim on the truth and instead settled for a perfect incompleteness.

In scene after scene, meaning sneaks in and sometimes roars.