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Markus Schleinzer is a filmmaker who knows how to wait for a payoff: Take the dry in-joke, for example, of waiting seven years to follow his 2011 debut “Michael” with a film called “Angelo.” His tartly brilliant second feature is awash with slow-building irony, though as with his first, there’s precious little mirth in its devastating kicker. An interpretive biopic of Angelo Soliman — an African man kidnapped into slavery as a child, who subsequently rose and fell through the ranks of 18th-century Viennese high society — Schleinzer’s film takes a chillingly but aptly clinical view of a life treated as an amusing human experiment by all but the man living it. Behavior is painstakingly observed and notes are extensively taken, before “Angelo” tersely delivers its own findings on the toxicity of the culture that colonized its title character.

Lest the “Michael”/”Angelo” segue lead viewers to expect a clear partner piece to Schleinzer’s debut,...