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Sonja Prosenc’s Family Therapy tells the story of a well-to-do Slovenian clan and the cracks that begin to emerge in their perfectly constructed world. The Kralj family lives in isolated splendor within their sleek modern abode, surrounded on all sides by towering windows that offer views of the surrounding forest yet also reflect their own self-imposed separation. This insular dynamic is disrupted by the sudden arrival of Julien, the long-lost son of patriarch Aleksander, who was invited to join this eccentric group for mysterious reasons of his father’s devising.

Prosenc’s film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, hinting at influences from satirists like Yorgos Lanthimos through her sharp-edged social commentary. She examines the facades adopted even within families and what happens when forces disrupt long-held facades. The Kraljs seem to have constructed an immaculate exterior, but upon Julien’s entrance, subtle cracks soon emerge that suggest deeper vulnerabilities beneath the surface.

After a world premiere in Tribeca’s international narrative competition, Slovenian director-writer Sonja Prosenc brings her third feature, the social satire “Family Therapy,” to contend in Sarajevo. The filmmaker’s latest provides an absurdist spin on the premise of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Teorema,” as the arrival of a handsome, young stranger disrupts the dynamics of an unpleasant, nouveau riche Slovenian family. While a fun watch for most of its run, Prosenc allows the narrative to spin out of control, running on past several natural endings. As with the director’s previous films “The Tree” and “History of Love,” all shot by the talented Mitja Ličen (“Small Body”), the glorious cinematography, strong acting and breath-taking production design provide some compensation for the flaws of the screenplay.

The striking opening moments, featuring a smoking car that bursts into flames along the side of a road and a family of three scrambling to safety,...

Slovenian filmmaker Sonja Prosenc is prepping her fourth feature, an untitled drama about “sisterhood and female liberation” that follows on the heels of her Tribeca premiere “Family Therapy,” a biting social satire-cum-family drama that has its European premiere in competition this week at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

She’s also co-developing the dark comedy-horror series “Little Yugoslavia” with North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska, which the duo will be pitching at the Bosnian fest.

Describing her next feature as “a drama with thriller elements,” Prosenc said the film is structured like a puzzle, where the narrative arranges each piece until it gradually constructs the worlds of three women. Set in Slovenia and Italy, it follows their separate lives as they move toward an inevitable convergence, their interconnected stories slowly assembling and culminating in a dramatic collision.

Prosenc said the movie will “explore themes of freedom, sisterhood and the unpredictable power...