Tabu

One of the toasts of the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, Tabu takes its viewers down two parallel storylines: One’s squarely rooted in modern-day Lisbon, the other explores a Portuguese colony in Africa decades earlier. Director Miguel Gomes shoots both threads in evocative black and white but gives each its own visual flavor. What could be an exercise in directorial show-offery gels into a cohesive and arresting whole. That said, the flashback storyline plays out with such incomparable elegance, it’ll take your breath away.