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BAMcinemaFest 2016: What to see at the Brooklyn film festival

BAMcinemaFest, among the most essential annual surveys of independent cinema anywhere, returns to Brooklyn beginning this week with a slate of movies that stands out because it stands apart from the clichés one typically associates with the sort of movies that excite the Sundance crowd.

None of these films are quite like the others. The roster includes the latest philosophical exploration by Werner Herzog, a documentary that equates the rise of the internet to changes underway in the fundamental human condition (“Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World”); another hardened vision from Todd Solondz (“Wiener-Dog”); the portrait of a Somali refugee in Minneapolis (“A Stray”), and a whole lot more.

There’s no simple way to categorize any of this, except that programmers offer 23 New York premieres and two North American premieres that collectively illustrate an industry that is, creatively speaking, alive and well.

The festival runs June 15-26 at BAM Rose Cinemas. These are some of the movies that have our interest piqued: