This feature about a month aboard an ocean­going cargo ship isn’t something you might catch on the Discovery Channel. There are no chipper voice-overs or talking heads unloading facts about tonnage or horsepower or how many football fields you could fit on the deck.

Montreal filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière has created a trance-inducing visual poem in black and white. Shadows sway and metal joints creak with the rhythm of the waves. Crew members divide their time between quiet personal moments and intense work—steering through storms, perching in engine-room crawlspaces, scrubbing holds—all against the muffled thunder of the hull and the hum of big machines.

These routines and the massively engineered environment in which they happen do little to dispel the sense that the sea is still a haunted place.

Cinematheque, May 2 (9:15 p.m.)