The radiant Dutch film Antonia's Line offers the story of four generations of strong women in a small village. When Antonia, the matriarch, returns home to her family farm after World War II, her grandeur of spirit infuses the lives of the people around her. The fluid narrative balances Fellini-esque magical realism (village idiots and talking statues) with the certain rhythms of country seasons, while the film's cinematography evokes a 16th-century Flemish landscape inhabited by characters who might have stepped straight out of a Brueghel painting.

Havi Hoffman