Night Watch

Under the fluorescent hum of a supermarket after dark, Magno keeps his eyes on the boys with backpacks who drift through the aisles, his attention hovering between duty and something less easily named. A few registers away, the cashier Bismarck waits out a shift that seems to stretch without end. Brazilian director João Victor Borges sets this Portuguese-language short inside that closed, artificially lit world, letting the tedium of the night and the small charged encounters between strangers carry the drama. Alexandre Amador, Artur Maia and Lucas Inácio Nascimento lead a cast of watchers and watched in a film about who is observing whom.