Manakamana

Filmed in a cable car shuttling to and from a mountaintop temple in Nepal, MANAKAMANA deploys radical simplicity to entrancing effect. In 11 shots, each as long as a ride—and the duration of a roll of 16mm film—filmmakers Spray and Velez evoke an entire world. The latest from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnographic Lab (Sweetgrass, Leviathan), this is a documentary at once rigorous and intimate, a transcendental, uniquely transporting experience.