Haunted by her father's death, Claire Denis turned to William Faulkner as inspiration for her new film "Bastards."

"It's the way he described how powerless we are with our future," said Ms. Denis. "The tragic thing is, we don't know about tomorrow."

Her revenge drama can be seen Sunday at the New York Film Festival and during a retrospective that begins the same day at the Museum of the Moving Image. The film shows at IFC Center and on-demand starting Oct. 23. (Her 2001 cannibal thriller "Trouble Every Day" also is revived Friday for a weeklong run at BAMcinématek.)

The film illustrates this through the ill-fated campaign of Marco (Vincent Lindon), a supertanker captain who comes ashore to get even with the corrupt financier (Michel Subor) who has destroyed his sister's family—including his niece (Lola Créton), who has been hospitalized after a brutal episode of sexual abuse. Marco begins an affair with his antagonist's lover (Chiara Mastroianni), but the relationship becomes more complicated than any apparent scheme.

"He believes the future is at his hand," said Ms. Denis, 65 years old, during a conversation at the recent Toronto International Film Festival. "The future is like a boat, and he's the master. He doesn't know he is going to be the victim."

The director, who has explored aspects of her native France's colonialist history in films as intimate as "35 Shots of Rum," about the relationship between a widowed African immigrant and his daughter, and as bracing as the African civil-war saga "White Material," describes her stories as circular in form. But the story of "Bastards" was constructed "block by block, like building a wall," she said.

Key details are revealed in fragments that aren't always obvious. A hypnotic mood is evoked through shadowy lighting and an electronic score by the British pop group the Tindersticks.

"Her films can be very poetic, but they're never precious. They can be very funny but never silly or dumb," said Jim Jarmusch, who brought on Ms. Denis as an assistant director for his 1986 comedy "Down By Law." "Somehow they remain observational, always. And the camera, it's like music that never has extra notes in it that aren't needed."

Ms. Denis cultivates a thematic connection between recent sex scandals involving powerful European men and the sexual slavery depicted in Faulkner's 1931 novel "Sanctuary," from which the film borrows lurid imagery. She also looked to Toshiro Mifune's performance as the doomed hero in "The Bad Sleep Well," Akira Kurosawa's 1960 saga of corporate corruption, with Mr. Lindon inhabiting the archetype as a brusque sea captain.

"For a man it's the best job ever," she said. "You're totally in charge. If I was a man, I would like to be this kind of man, sort of a heroic figure of masculinity."

In person, Ms. Denis is slender and elegant, making expressive use of her hands as she deliberates over her often philosophical replies, pausing a few beats as she reaches for the right word. When she's behind the camera, the director prefers her actors to display all the courage.

"Me, I am like a vague cousin in the story that is enjoying the family in that moment," she said. "I like when it's moving like a ghost train."