A young postgraduate, returning to New York City from a visit to his lover in Milan, reconnects with his well-to-do family in Westchester and promptly disappears. Concerned, his friends and colleagues examine the materials he left behind, searching for clues to explain his disappearance. But the outside world, swelling with unrest and the pervasive sense of impending violence, is relentless. Ricky D’Ambrose’s NOTES ON AN APPEARANCE is a formally ambitious film that deftly layers real-world dread within a cloistered, fictional universe that speaks directly to our contemporary situation.

Q&A with writer/director Ricky D’Ambrose and actress Madeleine James to follow Sunday’s screening.