A woman arrives on an island to bury her recently deceased husband. Here, she encounters a priest seeking refuge from her own faltering faith. What begins with unease evolves into a profound connection in Pirjo Honkasalo’s masterful drama.

Nora, an opera singer whose creative success has left her unprepared for her husband’s death, embraces his wishes to be buried on a small, remote lighthouse island. Already living there is Natalia, a priest whose fractured relationship with her faith has left her in quiet turmoil. The women’s initial unease gives way to a fragile bond, forged through the unspoken weight of their shared past. Guilt and grace intermingle as their paths cross, and their redemption may hinge on their willingness to face it together.

Initially starting out in drama, Pirjo Honkasalo achieved critical acclaim with her extraordinary feature documentaries, including 2004’s The 3 Rooms of Melancholia. Orenda is the director’s first feature since she returned to narrative filmmaking with Concrete Night in 2012. Whereas that film was a potent study of youth masculinity, her new film is an austere and utterly compelling portrait of two women finding their place in the world and out of the ashes of trauma and grief. A drama that focuses on the minutiae of its character’s actions as a way of understanding the nature of their troubles, Orenda is a moving portrait of human lives and of the strength that we muster in order to live them.