Celestial blues are speckled with red and religious icons flicker and fall in Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature. With cinematography by Hélène Louvart, the filmmaker braids the discoveries of girlhood into towering questions of faith to create a coming-of-age tale that is at once lived-in and divine.

Calling the shots on the first feature ever directed by a Palestinian woman, Annemarie Jacir is nothing short of a pioneer in Arab cinema. This sophomore feature was Palestine’s official entry for the 2012 Oscars®: a delicate coming-of-age drama, and an insightful study of absence, exile, and war.