Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s film, which won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft at Sundance, transports viewers to a lush forest in the Eastern Himalayas.

In Nocturnes, a new documentary by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, moths prove themselves to be this planet’s most poetic creatures. Their beauty comes mostly from their routines, but they also possess aesthetic charm. They boast striking colors and patterned wings that rival their more popular cousins. They follow the moon, guided by both its phases and its light. At night, the silver glow illuminates their paths as they flit from flower to flower in search of nectar. 

There, quantitative ecologist Manis leads an ambitious mission to catalog every type of Himalayan moth. These insects, she tells her co-conspirator Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, can help people better understand the impact of climate change. Moths are not only incredibly diverse (there’s said to be some 160,000 species in the world, compared to 17,500 for butterflies), but they have also survived every age of the planet. Their endurance is at once a paean to their spirits and a well of prescient lessons. 

When the moths start to overwhelm the sheet, on which Manis has drawn mini grids, the researchers begin photographing them with a digital camera. Cinematographer Satya Nagpaul uses close-up shots to create gorgeously composed scenes that find the beauty in these misunderstood creatures. A death’s-head hawkmoth bears a pattern resembling a skull. Others spread their wings to reveal circles that look like eyes. Some are a radiant yellow, others a muted gray. These moments are some of the best in Nocturnes because in their detail, Dutta and Srinivasan relay an intimate understanding of this habitat. 

Early in Nocturnes, Manis explains that they must take each image precisely because later, they will use them to accurately measure the lengths, width and wingspan of each insect. There is no estimated timeline for this work. Driven by an admirable determination, she and her team plan to reveal the migratory patterns of these beguiling creatures by comparing their sizes, shapes and populations at various elevations. Are the Himalayan moths, partial to cooler weather, ascending up the mountains as temperatures below steadily rise? What are the implications of this movement, since moths support the local ecosystem?

These are just a few of the questions they pose with their experiments. Dutta and Srinivasan don’t set out to furnish answers in their 83-minute feature, which might frustrate those looking for definitive conclusions. There are informative moments in which Manis explains the animals’ habits, talks through her research with colleagues and presents early findings of her study, but they have a strained quality that feels discordant with the relaxed posture of the rest of the film.

It’s in transporting viewers into the heart of this jungle, where the moths calibrate the ecosystem, that Nocturnes most its most compelling case for protecting these exquisite creatures and our planet.