Mention must also be made of Afterschool. It was the only NYFF entry I actually despised and was also the only movie, of the nine press and industry screenings I have so far attended, to receive actual applause afterwards. Pitched as an exposé of sex, drugs, and violence among Manhattan teens marooned at a Connecticut prep school, Antonio Campos’s debut has going for it the affectless performances of its amateur cast combined with some inventive lensing from cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes. But Campos’s sophomoric observations about mass media and his woe-is-rich-kids vibe are off-putting. Anyone looking for a text that blames adolescent immorality on the hypocrisy of adults is better off sticking with Catcher in the Rye.

Anomie is also the subject of A Headless Woman (the original title, la mujer sin cabeza, is an Argentinian expression for a woman with no sense), though in contrast with Campos, director Lucrecia Martel envisions a world where everyone is culpable, if not accountable. In Woman’s first scene titular dentist Verónica (Maria Onetto), distracted by her cellphone while driving, runs over something or someone. She flees the scene, then tries to forget the incident ever happened, only to learn a week later that she may have killed a child. This prompts her family and friends to circle their wagons, methodically erasing any evidence that she was ever on that road. While Verónica is the one who commits the crime, her loved ones are the engineers of a cover-up that renders her imprisoned with her own guilt. Atmospheric, mysterious, and formally ethereal, A Headless Woman is a unnerving study of the price a society pays for silence.