SIFF's Women in Cinema—a five-night festival devoted to significant new works by female filmmakers—kicks off tonight with Hannah Arendt, which Charles crowd about in Stranger Suggests. Things continue through the weekend, and you can find the full schedule of films here.

For now, let me direct you to this week's Art House column, in which Charles Mudede holds forth on one Women in Cinema's highlights: Kristina Buozyte's Vanishing Waves, which Charles ID's as "the first important science-fiction film of this decade":

Directed by Kristina Buozyte and set in Lithuania in the very near future (or even the present), the film is about a team of European scientists who are experimenting with a technology that links human brains. The technology is composed of a black sensory-deprivation tank and two white nets of nodes and wires that are attached to the targeted brains. (The person who is in the deprivation tank is the receiver of electrical transmissions from the brain the tank is linked to.) Soon after the film opens, a test is conducted with a thirtysomething research assistant, Lukas (Marius Jampolskis), and a woman in a coma, Aurora (Jurga Jutaite). The man enters the tank, closes his eyes, and waits. Though a connection is made, the scientists are a little puzzled by the results, and the man leaves the tank in a daze.

On the next test, however, something strange happens...

Read the whole review here. Vanishing Waves screens at SIFF Cinema Uptown today at 4:30 pm and Saturday at 9 pm. Full festival info here.