From the very first shot, Nicolas Pesce?s ?The Eyes of My Mother? unsettles as a broken woman staggers along a deserted country road before collapsing in front of an oncoming truck. It will be a long time before we learn who she is or what has happened to her; meantime, there are more than enough horrors to keep us occupied.

Sliced into three increasingly dismaying sections ? abruptly labeled Mother, Father and Family ? and shot in liquid black and white, the story (by Mr. Pesce) details the gradual unraveling of Francisca (Kika Magalhaes), a young Portuguese-American woman.

As a child, Francisca coolly absorbed the anatomy lessons that her mother, a former eye surgeon, delivered with the help of animal carcasses. And when a beaming psychopath invades her family?s lonely farmhouse, Francisca observes his bloody purpose with the same clinical detachment.

Unfolding with Watch The Eyes of My Mother 2016 of dialogue, Francisca?s maturation from watcher to doer would be laughable if performed with less nuance or photographed with less originality. Desperately hugging her father?s corpse in clouded bath water, or swabbing inky pools of blood, Ms. Magalhaes, a former dancer, uses her expressive eyes and graceful limbs to bring the intimacy and sensuality of her actions to vivid life.