The Cathedral

Since 2015, the filmmaker Ricky D’Ambrose has been crafting a unique form of cinematic fiction that combines live action and voice-over narration, faux documents and authentic archival footage, to dramatize the inseparability of private lives and social history. His new, quasi-autobiographical feature, “The Cathedral” (opening on Sept. 2 and streaming on MUBI starting on Sept. 9), centered on Jesse Damrosch, who (like the director) was born in 1987 and raised on Long Island, is a thrillingly original coming-of-age story. With a brusquely declarative style, D’Ambrose exposes the deep-rooted and invariably political conflicts within Jesse’s family and their effect on the perceptive boy. (Jesse is played, at different ages, by four actors; Brian d’Arcy James and Monica Barbaro play his parents.) The years are distinguished by fights and tensions at family gatherings, such as a birthday party and a vacation—and by the era’s public crises, including two wars in Iraq and the 2004 Presidential election. Amid the turmoil, Jesse gazes out windows, watches patterns of light and shadow on walls and floors, stares at snapshots, and develops an artistic sensibility—the film’s own aesthetic, which reveals the hidden sublimity and muted tragedy of daily life. (Aug. 27.)