A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.

Scenes from the working life of a male director: Defa sophisticatedly lampoons masculinity in filmmaking with this sly, surprising meta-movie. (Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center.)

An applauded New York intellectual hires a young archivist to whitewash her late psychologist father's reputation by eliminating a forbidding, potentially incriminating paper trail.