Drab, widowed professor Walter Vale comes back to his rarely-used NYC apartment to find it occupied. The squatters are a pair of refugees: Syrian musician Tarek and his Senegalese partner, Zainab. With the experimental curiosity of one with not much left to lose, Walter opts to befriend the runaways rather than asserting his property rights, and a significant friendship is born. The onscreen chemistry of Terek’s mother Mouna with Jenkins is as unexpected and gently powerful as the bond developed by their characters. An old-fashioned movie about human interconnectedness played out against a very modern landscape of shifting borders and unstable citizenship, The Visitor has both warmth and pertinence.