Distant Constellation

Shevaun Mizrahi’s first feature-length documentary, Distant Constellation is an intimate portrait of the relatively insular lives lead by the residents of a retirement home in Istanbul. Its subjects—among them a woman who was witness to the Armenian Genocide, a sight-impaired former photographer still very enthusiastic about his practice, an artistic bon vivant with a smoldering libido—give the film both cultural specificity and universality through Mizrahi’s depiction of the ways the elderly experience time and memory. The director was named one of 2015’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker magazine. (80 mins., DCP)