White cherry blossoms descend from the sky just as a tragedy is about to change the course of a uniquely religious fishing community on the shores of Lake Peipsi, the body of water that separates Estonia from Russia. Relatively commonplace as that description may read, writer-director Marko Raat’s “8 Views of Lake Biwa” is closer to a dreamlike folktale — set sometime during the 20th century — than to pastoral realism.

For starters, Raat took the title, along with the names for each segment the narrative is divided into, from a series of centuries-old Japanese paintings (in turn inspired by ancient Chinese art) depicting scenic views from distinct points along the eponymous Lake Biwa, near the city of Kyoto. And while the geographic location in the film is nowhere near that Asian nation, in this imagined reality, Raat’s characters can seemingly travel to Japan by boat without much trouble, as if...