De los Santos Arias’ little-seen first feature opens with an extended shot of the New York skyline captured from a cable car suspended high above the city streets. From there, things move into the apartment of the director’s real-life aunt and cousin, Dominican immigrants doing their best to assimilate in an environment hostile to outsiders. Spoken largely in Caribbean Spanish, the film finds de Los Santos Arias—whose voice can often be heard off-camera—reconnecting with his relatives while simultaneously observing their isolated lives, which are marked by a variety of physical, spiritual and mental health struggles. (“If I was born OK, you’d be fucked!” the cousin tells the filmmaker at one point.) Between occasional visits from neighbors, the two women bicker and gossip about family and friends as days pass by with little differentiation. Unlike most of de Los Santos Arias’ subsequent films, You Look Like a Carriage can be rightly classified as a documentary, though the young filmmaker’s formal acumen is already on display in idiosyncratic camera movements and unexpected breaches in the dramaturgy. Few films make New York feel so cloistered and alien.