The Currents section for the 59th New York Film Festival includes 15 features and 36 short films, representing 27 countries. The Opening Night selection is Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’s (Arabian Nights, NYFF53) The Tsugua Diaries, a beguiling pandemic-era tale about three housemates in lockdown—one of several films in the section responding to the current health crisis through varying lenses; others include Shengze Zhu’s A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces, a meditation on urban spaces before and after the COVID outbreak, and Denis Côté’s Social Hygiene, an absurdist comedy in which characters exchange barbs from a humorous distance.
