When pitted against Dakota Goldhor’s femme fatale, Cid’s as confused as he is aroused; when confronted by Lee Lynch (another gifted filmmaker taking a turn before the camera) or Darryl Hughto, he’s as amused by their eccentric, logorrheic monologues as we are. Bewildered, angry and bemused, he guides the audience into the film’s complexities in stoic reaction shots that reveal more desperation and confusion with each iteration. Best of all are his droll scenes with Jason Decker as the smarmy prison warden. Decker, looking and sounding like the exasperated comic foil in a forties thriller, turns the film’s artiest moments into sly comedy, answering Winter’s agitation with a bureaucrat’s amiable condescension.

The Thin Time is Hughto’s second feature, after the documentary The Mirror Eye. Together, the films point towards enormous potential: here is a young filmmaker willing to use familiar material to push the audience into unfamiliar territory, who is equally adept with comedy, nonfiction and nightmare, who is both unabashedly literary and purely cinematic. As his craft catches up with his ambitions, he could go anywhere.