In a “transfixing cinematic essay,” master director Patricio Guzmán travels to Chile’s Atacama Desert, the epicenter of two disparate communities: astronomers, who have claimed it as the best stargazing spot in the world; and relatives of “disappeared” (Chileans killed during Augusto Pinochet’s regime) who search the bone-dry desert for any traces of their loved ones preserved in the sand. Guzmán paints the two groups as performing essentially the same activity: searching for answers in the face of impenetrable silence, either from the universe or the government.

New York: Dec. 23 at Museum of the Moving Image.