An intriguing new entry in the still-alive zombie-apocalypse genre, the German-language Ever After (Endzeit), from Swedish director Carolina Hellsgård, goes deeper than most screen depictions of the undead. It’s also gorgeous-looking, thanks to cinematographer Leah Striker, which adds to the film’s captivating quality.

A horror/road movie/eco-drama hybrid, Ever After focuses more on the relationship between its two main characters than on inventive portrayals of guts and decaying flesh, though there’s some of that too (but probably not enough to satisfy diehard gore fans).

At the heart of the film, which is based on the screenplay by Olivia Vieweg (who adapted it from her own graphic novel) is an unlikely alliance between two young women — the fragile, weak-seeming Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and badder-assed Eva (Maja Lehrer).

The setting is post-plague Germany, two years into the apocalypse, where there are human survivors in only two cities: Weimar, where the infected are killed immediately, and Jena, where people are researching a cure. Vivi and Eva meet as stowaways on a self-driving supply train from the former to the latter city. Though temperamentally and emotionally very different, they’re both searching for something lost in their former lives. It’s a setup that could have led to a more conventional apocalypse survival story, but Ever After ultimately winds up veering into an entirely different direction.

Forced to ditch the train at one point, the mismatched duo are often at odds, but they keep circling back to each other. As they discuss their former lives, we see flashbacks that hint at what’s haunting and driving each of them. On the way through an enchanted-looking Black Forest, bathed in beautifully diffuse light, they run into various zombie types — including a grossly decaying bride who owes something to Dickens’ Miss Haversham — that are closer to the fast-moving 28 Days Later variety than traditional Living/Walking Dead foot-draggers. They also come upon a mysterious older woman (Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, star of the recent Nico, 1988), who lectures them about the apocalypse as part of a bigger world shift. An earthy being in every sense of the word, she has embraced the fact that humankind will never be the same.

Though a bit vague and scattered-seeming at times, Hellsgård’s film is refreshing for its character development, tone and overall message. Kohlhof and Lehrer are excellent as its flawed, complicated protagonists.

“The good thing about the apocalypse: you can see all the stars again,” says Vivi toward the end of the film. It’s a nice sentiment, but also kind of a warning. How long can the world we have created last?

Ever After (Endzeit)opens on Friday, June 21, at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

Opening the same day on the other end of the cinematic spectrum is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. This engrossing portrait is narrated by Morrison herself, an engaging presence who describes growing up in a family that appreciated the power of words and language.

Through the course of the film, Greenfield-Sanders weaves Morrison’s autobiographical narration with testimonials from admirers and friends including Angela Davis, Hinton Als, Walter Mosley, Oprah Winfrey, Fran Lebowitz and Robert Gottlieb, her longtime editor. Criticized early on by white critics for “only” writing about the Black experience, Morrison rejected the notion that her (or any) writing should be geared to a particular audience. She recalls her days as an editor who fought for her writers, a teacher who exhorted her pupils not to write what they know, and a supportive mother of two sons, all while writing her own fiction. (She only became a full-time writer in her 40s after the success of Song of Solomon.)

The Pieces I Am shows how throughout her career, Morrison has bucked the traditional (white, male) literary establishment, eventually winning the 1993 Nobel Prize for Beloved — though that too ruffled some critics.

At the age of 88, however, she has clearly attained a lofty place in the literary firmament. The film is a celebration of a prolific and groundbreaking career.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am opens Friday, June 21, at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.