Review: Do Not Let Preparation for the Next Life Pass You By

Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar), the young woman at the center of Preparation for the Next Life, exists on a liminal plane of New York that only sometimes intersects with the visible one. She lives in the bustling Flushing Chinatown of northern Queens, a place that serves as a landing place for thousands of immigrants like her who are looking to establish some kind of toehold in the U.S. She rents a portion of a mazelike partitioned apartment and toils in the backrooms of warehouses and food courts, a participant in the underground economy of the undocumented, where there’s plenty of work to be found as long as you’re willing to be taken advantage of by bosses who are happy to remind you of the precariousness of your situation. While clearing tables in her uniform at a food hall and dozing exhau