Watch My Name is Oona

Gunvor Nelson's entrancing study of her young daughter is not so much a portrait as an invocation. Quicksilver montage make it impossible to discern where one image ends and another begins, richly conveying a fluid sense of a being. As much a work of sound art as a visual poem, the incantatory soundtrack (co-designed by composer Steve Reich) repurposes the childhood game of repeating a word until it turns to nonsense to evoke the enduring mystery of one's own name (the knife's edge of word and world). - Max Goldberg