In her new essayistic feature Empathy, poet and filmmaker Amie Siegel (The Sleepers) playfully explores some of what happens between (male) psychoanalysts and their (female) patients, including the exercise of power, manipulation, and the promise of empathy. A provocative mosaic of genres that interweaves “real” documentary interviews with middle-aged male analysts, screen tests with “patients,” and fictional melodrama, this film doesn’t shirk from turning the camera and occasionally blunt questions on those who usually wield their power in silence. Siegel’s gutsy approach includes digressions on modernism, the Eames chair, and her own authority issues. (Irina Leimbacher)