The idea that politics is an abstract concept that can be removed from, say, family dinner conversations would be laughable if it weren’t also so corrosive. Such thinking only makes sense if one understands politics to exist apart from the material circumstances that frame them and exempt from the real-life consequences they engender. Jan Komasa ’s “ Anniversary ,” a family drama set against an increasingly dystopian political landscape, understands that all too well. And if Komasa’s heady, provocative feature loses its way as it lands somewhere between a pitch-black satire and an all-too-bleak fable, it nevertheless finds urgency in depicting a family (and country) ravaged by the threat of authoritarianism.

Living in an affluent Virginia suburb just outside D.C., Paul (Kyle Chandler)

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