Questions of excess and principle are already in play when private-practice clinician Niri (Lima Das) goes out of her way to treat a patient’s emergency bout of nausea. Rather than food poisoning, she attributes his extreme illness to recklessly gorging himself. When debriefing with his friend Sumon (Arghadeep Barua) afterwards, Niri learns that both of them belong to a club dedicated to preparing fresh, rather than processed, meat, and that Sumon’s dissertation even focuses on regional meat-eating traditions across India. Sparks fly, but Niri is married, although her husband, also a doctor, is often absent for field work.

The pair’s mounting, unvoiced desire sets the stakes for Aamis, in which surface-level innocence becomes loaded with a significance beyond control. Through initially innocuous text conversations, Sumon and Niri grow closer, and begin to explore their blossoming connection through excursions to restaurants, in search of increasingly niche meat-based delicacies. In a patient and understated build, Bhaskar Hazarika folds in class commentary and dreamlike interludes, but saves the film’s most surprising and shocking gambit—and aftermath—for the third act, capping off an unforgettable meditation on taboo and transgression.

—Frederic Boyer