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I have no idea what’s happening inside Santiago Loza’s Brief Story from the Green Planet. This quest on behalf of three outcast best friends since childhood to deliver an ailing alien to the place where one’s grandmother found it is disorienting and obtuse, but above all else beautiful. There are parallels running through every scene whether the sense of “other,” the desire to feel included and at-home, or the notion of embracing one’s origins no matter how hurtful the memories might prove. And somehow nobody seems shocked to find a little blue comatose creature sleeping within an ice cube-filled suitcase. It’s almost as though its presence provides them comfort instead, opening their minds to accept their faults, own their eccentricities, and find contrition.

This is an awakening, sojourn through the past, and living funeral all-in-one with the recently dumped Daniela (Paula Grinszpan) searching for meaning within an isolating world,...