Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/12/2016)

Stone was researching a biopic of Martin Luther King when he was offered the chance to make an account of the events that prompted Edward Snowden to whistleblow on the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Initially, Stone was sceptical, as Laura Poitras had just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for her Snowden interview, Citizenfour (2014). Having met Snowden in Russia, however, he acquired the rights to Luke Harding's The Snowden Files and Anatoli Kucherena's Time of the Octopus and settled down to write a screenplay with Kieran Fitzgerald, who had been acclaimed for his first feature assignment on Tommy Lee Jones's The Horseman (2014). But, as with other recent stabs at topicality like World Trade Center (2006) and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Stone shows with Snowden that, while the fire continues to rage, he is no longer at the centre of the cinematic or political zeitgeist.

The action opens in the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong on 3 June 2013, as Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets up with documentarist filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) and journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) in order to record the interview that would form the basis of Citizenfour. Aware that American intelligence agents are searching for him after disappearing from his lodgings in Hawaii, Snowden is keen to confide his story and hopes that Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson) will be able to persuade deputy editor Janine Gibson (Joely Richardson) to publish his revelations and expose the US government's illegal mass surveillance programme.

Poitras coaxes Snowden into recalling his experiences while training with the US Army Reserve in 2004 and a flashback shows him determined to do his bit after 9/11. However, he quickly discovers that he is not Special Forces material and is invalided out of the service after the weight of his backpack so weakens the bones in his legs that they fracture during a leap from his bunk. Despite failing to graduate from high school, Snowden has a lively mind and exceptional computer skills. So, when he applies to join the CIA in 2006, his application is approved by Deputy Director Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans), who like the cut of his jib.

Arriving at the CIA Training Centre in Virginia known as `The Hill', Snowden is befriended by veteran operative Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage), who is impressed by his knowledge of old code machines and computers. However, Snowden learns from Forrester that the government doesn't always make wise decisions or play by the rules. Indeed, he is dismayed during one of O'Brian's seminars to discover the existence of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which circumvents the Fourth Amendment to allow the authorities to obtain secret warrants from a panel of judges appointed by the Chief Justice. Yet, when he is given eight hours to build a covert communications network and delete and rebuild it, Snowden only requires 38 minutes and O'Brian realises he has a promising talent on his hands.

Things are looking up for the reserved Snowden, as he has also just met photographer Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley) through the Geek Mate dating site. They have nothing in common politically and she is much more outgoing. But they forge such a bond that Mills accompanies Snowden when he is posted to maintain diplomatic computer security in Geneva in March 2007. He pals up with electronic surveillance wonk Gabriel Sol (Ben Schnetzer) and accidentally learns about the XKeyscore programme that enables the CIA to pierce any online security wall. Indeed, Sol is required to use it by a covert agent (Timothy Olyphant) to unearth compromising information on Pakistani banker Marwan Al-Kirmani (Bhasker Patel) in order to dupe him into betraying clients by framing him for drink driving.

Uncomfortable with meddling in the lives of innocent people, Snowden resigns from the CIA. But he is soon dispatched to Tokyo by the NSA under the cover of a contractor for Dell in order to design a programme named `Epic Shelter' to back-up data from the Middle East, in case it is hacked or deleted during a crisis. While they are away, Mills is delighted by the election of Barack Obama and teases Snowden about the fact that she has caused him to soften his right-leaning patriotism. But, once again, his conscience is pricked when he learns that US agencies are bugging friends and foes alike and have planted malware in computer systems that can be triggered when it suits Washington. Moreover, he breaks up with Mills because she feels she is making too many sacrifices for him.

Within three months, however, Snowden is back in Maryland with Mills and he seems content doing consultancy work for the CIA. During a skeet-shooting trip with O'Brian, however, Snowden meets NSA Deputy Director James Lowell (Patrick Joseph Byrnes), who recommends him for a post counter-hacking the Chinese in Oahu, Hawaii. Mills is against him returning to duty, but relents when she hopes that the warm climate will prevent him having further epileptic fits. He is pleased to be reunited with Sol in `The Tunnel', where he works alongside Patrick Haynes (Lakeith Stanfield) under Trevor James (Scott Eastwood). However, he is disturbed by the nonchalant attitude of the drone pilots based at the facility, who pick off terror suspects in Afghanistan using Epic Shelter data while viewing monitors thousands of miles from the frontline.

Increasingly disillusioned by the methods being employed by his government, Snowden begins coding a system called `Heartbeat' and lets Sol and Haynes into his secret. However, O'Brian gets to know about his scheme and warns him to be more careful during a webcam chat on a giant screen that makes O'Brian appear menacingly imposing. Convinced his home is being bugged, Snowden informs Mills that they are going to have to leave Hawaii. But she volunteers to stay in order to allay suspicion and he flees to Hong Kong after smuggling a microSD card inside his Rubik's Cube into the underground base and takes advantage of a security snafu to download thousands of files, which he proceeds to offer to Poitras and Greenwald.

Stone attempts to generate some suspense by having Gibson keep Greenwald and MacAskill waiting over clearance to run the story in the Guardian. But the hotel sequences largely fall flat until the storm breaks and Snowden has to be smuggled out of the hotel by Canadian human rights lawyer Robert Tibbs (Ben Chaplin), who billets him with a family in Hong Kong before he is able to smuggle him aboard a flight to Moscow. Plans to press on to Cuba before seeking asylum in Ecuador have to be abandoned, however, and Snowden is forced to accept the protection of Vladimir Putin after the Obama administration demands he returns to face the music. Mills joins him and he conducts a webchat with Alan Rushbridger that rather peculiarly sees Joseph Gordon-Leavitt replaced by the actual Edward Snowden halfway through so that he can explain himself in his own words.

Quite whether the Oliver Stone of old would have resorted to such a tacky sleight of hand is debatable. But it rather sums up a gimmicky biopic that is stuffed to the gunwales with technical jargon and computer graphics that only hint at the complexity and monumentality of the battles being fought in cyberspace and the damage that nations could do to each other without firing a missile. Anthony Dod Mantle's imagery is as slick as Mark Tildesley's production design and Alex Marquez and Lee Percy's editing. But Stone and Fitzgerald's scenario is frustratingly lightweight and lacking in objectivity in its efforts to make Snowden a high-principled hero.

Gordon-Leavitt does a passable impersonation in carrying a picture that frequently plays fast and loose with the facts, while suggesting that Mills somehow played a significant role in persuading Snowden to adopt a more sceptical approach to serving Uncle Sam. But only Rhys Ifans stands out from the amorphous supporting cast, as he limns a sinister avuncularity that is particularly unsettling during the Big Brother-style webchat. Consequently, Stone struggles to create the sense of immediacy and peril that Poitras managed to convey in Citizenfour, which remains the only essential viewing to understand Edward Snowden and what motivated him to alert Americans to President Obama's hypocrisy and the conspiracy in which they had all been unwittingly complicit.

Based in Britain since 1962, Australian journalist John Pilger has never been afraid to tackle the big issues of the day. Switching from newsprint, he started making films in Vietnam with The Quiet Mutiny (1970) and he has since travelled the world exposing the misdeeds of the ruling elite and the injustices endured by their victims. Pilger often wears his heart on his sleeve, while his patented brand of crusading reportage can sometimes be capriciously obfuscatory in its discussion of pertinent facts. But there's no question that he cares about the misuse of power and his commitment to alerting audiences to the dark deeds being perpetrated in their name is readily in evidence in his 60th film, The Coming War on China, which may rank among the most disconcerting and important of his entire career. Although the world's media harks on about Chinese bases on disputed Pacific territories like the Spratly Islands, the expansion of the `pivot to Asia' policy is less widely reported. According to James Bradley (the author of The China Mirage) and historian Bruce Cumings, the United States is stealthily encircling China with bases that pose a tangible threat to global security. Yet, while hawkish Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher considers Beijing to be the aggressor, entrepreneur and social scientist Eric X. Li points out that America (with its Christian need to convert) has misunderstood the psyche of a country that built the Great Wall to keep its enemies out rather than conquer them.

Pilger argues that this build up has largely been caused by the need to justify the continued existence of the industrial military complex and he notes that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama has spent heavily on increasing America's conventional and nuclear arsenals. In order to show how this is an extension of a long-existing policy, Pilger travels to Bikini, an atoll in the Marshall Islands that was used for testing hydrogen bombs during the Cold War. He meets with locals Rinok Riklon, Nerje Joseph, Betty Edmond and Lemoyo Abon who remember the tests that destroyed the paradise home that gave its name to an item of swimwear.

But, despite the reassurances given in the propaganda films of the late 1940s, Washington was using the island to assess the effects of radiation on humans, animals and the environment. Consequently, after the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb had been exploded in the region every day for 12 years, President Lyndon B. Johnson lied when he told the population in 1968 that it was safe to return to Rongelap, 100 miles from Bikini. Pilger presses US Ambassador to the Marshall Islands, Thomas H. Armbruster, about Project 4.1 and the use of the islanders as guinea pigs. But, even though there is plentiful evidence to show that people were deliberately returned to contaminated land, he denies that the United States had contributed directly to the spate of thyroid cancer deaths that followed. Moreover, they continued to be monitored by scientists like Dr Robert Conard until Greenpeace launched Operation Exodus in 1986 to move the residents to a clean island aboard the Rainbow Warrior.

Although this feels like a lengthy digression from his principal theme, Pilger is right to highlight the cavalier treatment of the Marshall Islanders, who received a mere $150 million in compensation for the spoliation of their territory. But the American presence remains at the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Site on Kwajalein. Rick Wayman from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation laments the fact that the islands are still being subjected to weapons testing from launch pads in California. Yet Pilger is perhaps more appalled by a form of Pacific apartheid that sees locals ferried in from their slums on nearby Ebeye to work for the service families who seem oblivious to the exploitation and poverty that has caused the islanders who once lived on an abundance of fresh fish and vegetables to have the highest rate of diabetes in the world.

Having denounced American arrogance in the region, Pilger returns to the targeting of China. But, as is his wont, he meanders off at another tangent in order to trace US-Sino relations since the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Acts around the time that the Statue of Liberty was erected to welcome the world's huddled masses. As Pilger shows a clip of Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu to condemn the `yellow peril' stereotype, James Bradley explains how opium money helped build America and how Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather, Warren Delano, made his fortune as a drug dealer. But America's ability to manipulate China ended with the 1949 Communist Revolution and Pilger notes that successive administrations ignored Mao Zedong's attempts at rapprochement. He admits in passing that China has a poor human rights record, but applauds the economic advance that has enabled millions to escape penury and suggests that current US hostility stems from its resentment that China has surpassed it as the planet's capitalist superpower.

On a visit to Shanghai, to show how the place were Mao founded the Chinese Communist Party now stands in the middle of a giant shopping mall, Pilger meets former Deng Xiaoping aide Zhang Weiwei, who says the West has little understanding of the realities of the Chinese system. Eric Li echoes this by claiming that the one-party state has shown more political flexibility than American democracy because it has prevented the rich from seizing the reins of power. Conveniently ignoring the concerted strategy of economic imperialism, he declares that China is only interested in maintaining its position in the Pacific and has no expansionist intentions. Journalist Zhang Lijia similarly insists that most Chinese would challenge the cliché that they are oppressed by a doctrinaire regime. Venturing away from the plush city centre, Pilger easily finds examples of class inequality among the migrant workers living in pitiful conditions in the outskirts. Zhang Lijia concedes that these settlements are an embarrassment, but avers that recent protests in China have been motivated by a desire for economic rather than political improvement. Despite the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the imprisonment of Nobel laureate Liu Xiabo, Zhang Weiwei also maintains that the country has benefited more from economic than political reform and he firmly believes that dissent that breaks the law should be punished.

This is a simplified and wholly unsatisfactory snapshot of the situation inside 21sr-century China. But Pilger has rarely been one for nuance when it comes to making his points and he needs to make Beijing seem less menacing in order to drive home his assertion that Washington is pushing the world towards the precipice. This achieved, he flies to the Japanese island of Okinawa, which is home to both 32 military installations and 87 year-old Fumiko Shimabukuro, who remembers the Second World War and the `bulldozers and bayonets' land seizures of the 1950s and is determined to prevent the US warmongering in the Pacific. Others wish to protect the dugong population in the waters near Camp Schwab, but demonstrations are often menaced by low-flying planes and Pilger recalls a crash into a primary school that is just one of 44 aircraft accidents that have occurred on the island since the USAF arrived.

Following a brief allusion to the abuse of local women by US personnel, Pilger meets Kiyoshi Sadawa from the Soka Gakkai organisation that runs a peace museum at a former nuclear missile site. He mentions that a Mace missile was nearly launched against China during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and serviceman John Bordne recalls the incident with chilling clarity. But this is far from the only place whose populace has been imperilled by the American presence and Pilger crosses to the South Korean island of Jeju to show how another base has sprung up to intimidate Beijing. As Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Space Weapons explains how Washington plans to blockade China's access to vital resources, Pilger meets Catholic priest Mun Jeong-hyeon who says daily masses outside the gates to get round South Korea's strict laws on political protest. Quaker activist Oh Cheol-geun does his bit with a bowing meditation in the company of an artist activist named Wild Flower who walks behind him to prevent him being run over by passing traffic. Their dedication is noble, but such encounters distract from Pilger's wider point about the threat posed by the 5000 US bases dotted around the globe.

Bruce Cumings notes that these facilities are forced upon fearfully compliant democratic nations and claims they form an `archipelago of empire'. But a smiling Daniel R. Russel, the Assistant Secretary of State, insists that the United States has no intention to emulating 19th-century Britain and is no longer in `the basing business'. But David Vine, the author of Base Nation, contradicts him by labelling them `lily pad bases' that are notionally operated by the 147 host nations. When asked about them, defence analyst Andrew F. Krepinevich quotes George Washington's maxim that preparing for war is the best way to maintain peace. Pilger questions Russel about how he thinks China perceives such a build-up of forces, but interrupts to impose his opinion that Beijing is scared and that such defensive aggression could provoke a calamity. Academics Ted Postol and Stephen Starr agree that the government is indulging in too much sabre-rattling and, following a montage of mushroom clouds accompanied by `America the Beautiful', the latter explains how a nuclear conflagration would impact upon a planet shrouded in a black carbon cloud impermeable to the sunlight needed to grow crops. This is disturbing stuff, but Pilger makes rather sensationalist use of it when Postol is attempting to promote negotiation as the optimum way of solving difficulties with China. The election of the highly Sinosceptic Donald Trump makes such an approach seem less likely. But Eric Li insists that China and the USA are the most interdependent countries in human history and that the sooner they realise this, the better for us all. In his closing remarks, Pilger declares the existence of a third superpower made up of ordinary men and women who are unwilling to let the arms trade cast them into oblivion. This laudable film is obviously intended to be a rallying cry to mobilise their opposition to American belligerence. But, for all its alarming revelations and potent opinions, this is often a rambling jumble that allows too many unsettling, but tangential issues to undermine the cogency of its central argument. It also lets China off the hook with regard to its treatment of dissidents and minorities, as well as occupied states like Tibet. Pilger also fails to delve deeply enough into the true human and environmental cost of China's economic leap forward. But, as Trump demonstrated on the campaign trail, getting the message across is what counts. Although The Unknown Girl might not be a vintage outing by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, it seems a better bet for Belgium's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film than Robin Pront's first feature, The Ardennes. Maybe the selection panel was hoping to snag another unlikely nomination after Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead (2011). But this adaptation of a Jeroen Perceval stage play fails to survive a sudden tonal lurch in the final third, as Pront attempts to turn a gritty sibling saga into a darkly absurdist romp.

Four years have passed since Jeroen Perceval left brother Kevin Janssens to carry the can for a bungled robbery. In the interim, Perceval has quit drinking and taken up with Janssens's girlfriend, Veerle Baetens, who has similarly kicked her drug habit and is now expecting a baby to coddle along with her Chihuahua, Daisy. But, when Janssens is released, Perceval and Baetens decide not to mention the fact they are about to move in together and give the prodigal a much warmer welcome than his mother, Viviane de Muynck, who is bitterly disappointed by the way in which both her sons turned out.

Duping boss Peter Van den Begin into giving Janssens a job at the Antwerp car wash where he works, Perceval hopes to keep his short-fused brother on the straight and narrow. But he has not forgotten about Baetens, even though she stopped visiting him halfway through his sentence, and he interrupts her rehab meeting to accuse her of abandoning him before trying to kiss and make up by inviting her to Christmas dinner. Naturally, Perceval is unhappy with this turn of events, but persuades Baetens to keep up the pretence that have hardly seen each other since Janssens went inside.

Following an awkward meal, the brothers go to the skin bar where Baetens works as a waitress. Janssens punches old friend Nico Sturm during an argument about whether Eddie Merckx or Jean-Claude Van Damme is the greatest Belgian before picking an argument with Baetens's Moroccan boss, Rachid El Ghazaoui, with whom Janssens has a chequered history. A few days later, he gets into another scrap when he is attacked at the car wash and Van den Begin sacks them both when Perceval defends his brother.

Baetens wishes Perceval would settle down into the boring regime she craves and he promises he will find another job and break the news to Janssens about their romance. However, while carrying some recycling for an elderly neighbour, Perceval can't resist finishing a bottle of wine and he feels the need for some Dutch courage when Janssens turns up with El Ghazaoui's body in the boot of his car. Janssens insists it was an accident and threatens to tell the police about Perceval's role in the botched robbery unless he helps him reach the Ardennes, where old cellmate Jan Bijvoet has agreed to make the corpse disappear.

Driving to the densely wooded region along snow-edged roads, the siblings make contact in a seedy cabin bar with transvestite Sam Louwyck, who takes them to the junkyard where Bijvoet lives in a caravan. He shares some cocaine with Janssens while Louwyck cooks pancakes on an outdoor griddle. They are joined by gamekeeper Eric Godon, who has come to warn them that some ostriches have escaped from a nearby reserve. His dog keeps barking at the book of Perceval's car and, although Bijvoet insists that Ricardo must have picked up the smell of some barbecue sausages, Godon catches sight of the cadaver through the hatchback window.

Janssesns slaughters him with a knife before he can take his leave. But Perceval doesn't want to get caught up in a murder case and runs through the trees to hitch a ride to the local police station. He is waiting in reception when Janssens enters and informs him that he knows about his relationship with Baetens and will leave them in peace if he just helps sort out this mess. Perceval explains that he has spent his life trying to make Janssens see reason and fears he is such a loose cannon that he will keep causing him trouble.

The fraternal tie proves too strong, however, and Perceval agrees to go with Louwyck, while Janssens and Bijvoet chop up their victims in the latter's drug laboratory. But Janssens has betrayed his brother and Louwcyk pulls a gun on him back at the junkyard and Perceval only manages to escape after a fatal struggle. He torches the caravan and steals Louwyck's pick-up truck to confront Janssens once and for all. Yet, as he pulls a gun on his sibling, two ostriches stalk out of the woods and Louwyck uses the distraction to run over Perceval with his own car.

Just as he is about to finish him off with a knife, however, Janssens guns Louwcyk down and slumps beside Perceval in the cold mud. As Janssens points the gun to his temple, they hear the sound of a police siren through the darkness. But it is drowned out by a familiar ringtone and, when Perceval opens the car boot and unwraps the blanket, he is appalled to find Baetens inside and hauls his sheepish brother to the ground. He punches him repeatedly in the face and jams the gun against his forehead. However, he is so distraught that he fails to heed the warnings of the armed cops and he is shot dead, while Janssens is hauled into custody.

With the exception of the whoppingly contrived ostrich intrusion, there is little or nothing innovative, tense or amusing about this cliché-strewn slice of Flemish miserabilism, which says more about the kind of movies that Robin Pront watches than his own directorial vision. Production designer Geert Paredis capably captures the lower-rung dishevelment of Baetens's flat, while cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert makes the most of the confines within the car wash and the forest to impart some brooding menace on proceedings. But the plot lurches so awkwardly between key incidents that there is little room for any character development. Moreover, the climactic twist is a damp squib, as it seems highly unlikely that Perceval would not have either pressed Janssens harder about the circumstances of El Ghazaoui's demise or examined the body. Furthermore, Baetens doesn't come across as the kind of person to take being stood up for a flat viewing so meekly and the fact that she contents herself with mildly peevish texts instead of a two-barrel phone call should surely have set Perceval's alarm bells ringing.

Perceval and Janssens make suitably snarling siblings, but the slivers of backstory aren't enough to persuade the audience of their supposedly idyllic childhood sojourns in the Ardennes or their seething rivalry. It's also difficult to see why Baetens would hitch her star to either brother. But the closing stages are so full of such unconvincing quirks and stretches of credibility that the picture rapidly becomes an accidental parody of a low-grade Tarantino knock-off.

Third-time Irish director Billy O'Brien also loses control of his material in the home straight in I Am Not a Serial Killer, an adaptation of the first part of Dan Wells's bestselling `John Wayne Cleaver' trilogy of young adult novels. By allowing the initial aura of gallows whimsicality to be supplanted by gory supernaturalism, O'Brien not only foists an abrupt change of tone upon an otherwise agreeably offbeat storyline, but he also sacrifices the hard-earned sense of unpredictability for some disappointingly mundane generic jolts and some freakishly fantastical plot developments.

When a mechanic is brutally murdered in the sleepy mid-Western town of Clayton, the body is brought to the funeral parlour where 18 year-old John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) lives with his mother, April (Laura Fraser). Familiar with the procedures for embalming corpses, John has no fear of death and touches the insides of the cadaver when April and her sister assistant Margaret (Christina Baldwin) realise that the victim has had a kidney removed by his killer. Snooping around the spot where the body was found, John finds a small pool of tar on the floor.

Bullied at school by Rob Anders (Vincent Risso), John has taught himself to control his temper by paying his tormentors compliments, even when they flick mashed potato into his face. He confides this tactic to birdwatching psychiatrist Dr Grant Neblin (Karl Geary), who informs John that he has sociopathic tendencies, but also has the intelligence to keep them under control. Nevertheless, April is concerned when Principal Layton (James Gaulke) calls her to his office to show her an essay that is full of ghoulish references to death.

Although he has school friends like Max (Raymond Brandstrom), John gets on better with ageing neighbour Bill Crowley (Christopher Lloyd) and shows him how to send a kiss photo to his wife, Kay (Dee Noah). But he also has a crush on classmate Brooke Watson (Lucy Lawton), who lives nearby with her parents (Dave Stauffer and Jennifer Blagen) and younger brother, and he watches her through the window at mealtimes and when she is undressing in her bedroom. So, when Rob warns him off chatting to her at a Halloween party, John spooks him out by telling him how he is sure he is more interesting on the inside (should he ever cut him open) that he appears from his dull exterior.

John gets lectured by Nebin for giving Rob nightmares. But, as a second victim has been found with a severed arm, John is more interested in keeping tabs on a stranger (Matt Roy) he keeps seeing mooching around town. As snow blankets the town, he follows the man when he hooks up with Crowley outside a diner to go ice fishing on the lake. Hiding behind a tree, John watches as his quarry cuts a hole with a chainsaw. But, when he turns his back, Crowley runs him through with a sharp pole and John wets himself with fear.

Waking next morning on the slab in the embalming room, John is told by Margaret to play the dutiful son for Thanksgiving because his sister, Lauren Bacall (Anna Sundberg), has cried off at the last minute. Still musing on what he had witnessed, John stares with grim fascination as April removes the turkey's innards. Determined to do a little snooping, he offers to shovel snow off the Crowleys' drive and is appalled by how nonchalant the couple are as they make him hot chocolate for his efforts.

When they go to an afternoon dance, John follows and learns from the TV news that the most recently deceased went missing over 40 years ago. He notices how Crowley gazes at Olson the barber (Tim Russell) dancing with Kay and follows them to a Chinese restaurant, where his sleuthing is abruptly stopped when he is spotted by April, who is out on a date with Neblin. They argue in the car on the way home, but Neblin insists John is making good progress and April is vaguely reassured.

In fact, John has started researching witchcraft and supernatural phenomena in the school library and is too engrossed to realise that Brooke is trying to reach out to him. But he quickly becomes aware that he is slipping out of his depth when he follows Crowley to the barbershop and tries to stop him from murdering Olson by setting off the burglar alarm. However, he succeeds only in getting two cops killed and wanders past their corpses on the shop floor after watching Crowley drive away with Olson's body in his boot. Shuffling home, he peers in through the window to see the Crowleys dancing together in a pool of golden light.

Hoping to unnerve Crowley, John puts a note saying `I know what you are' on his windscreen watches from his bedroom window as the old man looks around and creeps back indoors. He remains there for over a week and his wife admits to being worried about him when the neighbours gather for an outdoor vigil to show solidarity against the serial killer. She suggests John pays him a visit and he finds him staring into the fire quoting William Blake. A few days later, he has to help him up the stairs to the bathroom and Crowley thanks John for being so supportive.

Christmas comes and Lauren puts in a reluctant appearance. Their father sends them presents, but John is upset by his reminder of the songs they used to sing when he was a kid and he storms out into the snow. He calls Crowley from a callbox to ask why he is so inconsistent in his slaying style. But Crowley jumps into his car tracks him down to the payphone and John only just escapes through the backstreets to seek sanctuary with Max. He is surprised to see his friend on Christmas night and asks him to leave when John admits that he only hangs out with him because he needs someone normal in his life. As he pulls on the panda balaclava his mother bought him, John sees Crowley eviscerating Max's dad (Michael Paul Levin) on the street outside. Feeling brave because his face is covered, he tries to intervene. But Crowley roars at him and he backs away.

On seeing Crowley consoling Max at another candlelit vigil, John feels revulsion (but resists reporting Crowley to the police) and pulls a kitchen knife on April when she pleads with him to talk to her because he has been acting so strangely. Next morning, she tries to reassure him that everything is okay, but John sneaks out to purchase a tracking device (which he buys by trading in the mp3 player his father bought) and slips it into the boot of the Crowleys' car. When Bill goes out in the small hours, John breaks into the house and sends him a photo of Kay sleeping in a bid to prevent him from killing. But she struggles when he tries to put a pillow case over her head and he knocks her out with the clock radio.

Pulling the panda mask over his face, John slips out as Crowley crashes up the stairs to check on his wife. He goes to the car to remove the tracking device and is horrified to see Neblin dead on the backseat. However, he refuses to let Crowley steal a body part and drags his body into the woods. Crowley sees him return to the house and follows to the funeral parlour where the service is being held for Max's dad. He slides into a pew next to John and demands to know where he has hidden Neblin because he needs his heart urgently. But John refuses to divulge the hiding place and tries to lock Crowley in the chapel. However, April is still inside and John rushes to the morgue to discover her lying unconscious on the slab.

He sees she is still breathing and begs Crowley not to hurt her. But he is angry because John harmed Kay and explains that he has remained human for so long because he loved her. Fighting for breath, he asks John for the corpse he needs to harvest and rises to check the body freezer. However, John knock him out with the winch above the slab and urges April to help him drain the corpse of its pitch tar blood and fill it with embalming fluid while Crowley is still unconscious. She wonders what on earth he is doing and stands in amazement as Crowley's body begins to decay and a stick thin demon emerges from inside. It implores John to take care of Kay before stabbing itself with an air line and slumping to the floor.

As John watches Neblin's body being recovered from the woods, a news bulletin announces that Crowley has gone missing. He takes Kay some flowers and sits at her bedside as she describes how she first met her husband when they were both in their thirties. She was deeply touched when he first told her that he loved her on seeing her happy with family. John seems to sense the depth of the twisted love that drove Crowley to kill to stay at Kay's side. But there is no room for sentiment, as he helps April and Margaret embalm Dr Neblin.

There are always risks involved in translating a popular book to the screen, but Billy O'Brien and co-writer Chris Hyde seem to have made a fundamental error in deciding against having John Wayne Cleaver narrate the story, as this deprives the audience of the inner monologue that conveys the struggle against his own inner demons that rages while he works out what to do with Bill Crowley's reign of terror. Max Records makes a suitably affable anti-hero, but he rarely seems cripplingly conflicted and the only tangible evidence of his sociopathic urges comes during his guarded conversations with Dr Neblin. Moreover, by keeping us out of John's head, O'Brien is unable to follow the line of thinking that drives the youth to the occult section of the school library. Consequently, the revelation of Crowley's true identity comes out of nowhere and feels as contrived as the rather feeble digital effects used to depict the fiend.

Despite Robbie Ryan's effective 16mm images of the main street, the steam-spewing utility plant and the frozen Minnesota countryside, O'Brien rather struggles to convey the small-town atmosphere crucial to suggesting a community under siege. In addition, characters like April and Brooke are reduced to walk-ons as the focus fixes firmly on the cat-and-mouse game between John and Crowley, which - despite Adrian Johnston's unsettling score - lags significantly as John witnesses the murder of incidental figures and (having concluded that the local police are incapable of ending the spree) strains to devise a way of preventing Crowley from striking fresh victims.

Yet, amidst the conscious echoes of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001), the edgily vulnerable Records and the poignantly menacing Christopher Lloyd spar teasingly around the themes of empathy and love. So, while adherents of the text might feel short-changed, this seems destined to acquire a certain cult status and do much to boost O'Brien's reputation after the BAFTA-nominated short, The Tale of the Rat That Wrote (1999), and the features, Isolation (2005) and The Hybrid (2014).

Another character on the edge dominates Trey Edward Shults's Krisha, an ambitious, if sometimes overwrought expansion of a 2014 short, which was not only filmed in nine days at the debutant's nother's home in Montgomery, Texas, but which also features several members of his family and draws on the tragic addictions of Shults's alcoholic father, Bill, and his cousin Nica, who died of an overdose shortly after a disastrous attempt to reconnect with her kinfolk on Thanksgiving.

In a twist on the fictional tale, the film's star (and the director's aunt), Krisha Fairchild, raised her niece's son Israel and this melding of fact and fiction invites comparisons with fellow Houstonian Jonathan Couette's Tarnation (2003), which chronicled his relationship with his bipolar and schizophrenic mother, Renee Leblanc. However, Shults, who started out as an intern on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), has clearly been influenced by both his mentor and by the doyen of American improvisatory cinema, John Cassavetes.

Opening with an unforgiving close-up of sixtysomething Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) staring into the mirror at her wavy grey hair and careworn face - like Killer Bob (Frank Silva) in David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990-91) - the action shifts into a lengthy Steadicam shot depicting Krisha arriving for Thanksgiving with the family she has not seen for many years. Leaving her dog Dingo in the front seat of her pick-up truck, she hauls a wheeled suitcase up the wrong drive and steps in something unpleasant in teetering across the lawn to the house of her sister, Robyn (Robyn Fairchild).

Entering with a cheery assurance that barely masks her trepidation, Krisha embraces Robyn, doctor brother-in-law David (Chris Doubek), sister Vicki (Victoria Fairchild) and her husband Doyle (Bill Wise), nephews Logan (Bryan Casserly) and Alex (Alex Dobrenko), and nieces Atheena (Atheena Frizzell) and Augustine (Augustine Frizzell). She also makes a fuss of nephew Chase (Chase Joliet), wife Olivia (Olivia Grace Applegate) and their three-month-old daughter, Rose (Rose Nelson). But Krisha seems much more guarded as she greets Trey (Trey Edward Shults), who turns out to be her estranged son, and she heads out to collect Dingo with a look of relief and strain on her face.

Missing the tip of her left index finger, Krisha applies some ointment before retying her bandage. She takes some pills from a cashbox opened with a key she wears on a chain around her neck and notes the dosage on a scrap of paper. Making sure Dingo is comfy on a chair, she goes downstairs and smiles at the men watching the football on television before listening to Vicki, who is about to collect their mother (Billie Fairchild) from her care home. It appears as though Krisha has volunteered to cook the turkey on her return to the fold in order to demonstrate that she has conquered her demons and can now be a responsible member of the family. While the boys arm wrestle and play baseball in the garden with a broom handle, Krisha chops the ingredients for some homemade stuffing. Chase watches intently as she removes the innards from the bird, but no one offers to help until the oven door is closed.

Relaxing on the patio, Krisha chats with the sardonic Doyle about the number of stray dogs that Vicki adopts. She asks after his health and he jokes about getting great results from the Viagra he is taking along with his heart medicine. He also claims that he has plans to sell his granddaughter, as he could get six figures for such a cute white baby on the black market. Venturing back indoors, Krisha eavesdrops on David asking Trey if he could sort out a problem with his computer. As David goes upstairs to browbeat cousins Alex and Logan for watching porn, Krisha looks through the drawers in the bureau and seems to find what she is looking for.

Having checked on the turkey, Krisha asks Trey if they can have a few moments alone and she sneaks upstairs to swallow another couple of pills, while Chase canoodles with Olivia on the porch and joshes her about the fact that being a parent makes him feel virile. Krisha has never found being a mother easy and she tries to apologise to Trey for letting him down. But he remains unreceptive and takes offence when she suggests that he devotes himself to his film-making hobby rather than his dull degree in business management. The camera closes in on their faces, as Krisha strives to show she cares. But Trey wants nothing to do with her and struts downstairs, leaving Krisha to stare into the distance, as the camera retreats slowly behind a glass door and along a corridor lined with family portraits to find Olivia singing Rose a lullaby.

Returning to the garden, where Alex and Logan are wrestling shirtless after an altercation with hosepipe, Krisha lights a cigarette and finds herself talking to Doyle again. He appears concerned and reminds her that he is family and that Krisha can always confide in him. Yet, when she declines to respond to an inquiry about her health, Doyle loses his temper and Krisha is taken aback when he insists that keeping everyone up to speed is the least the family deserves after all she has done to hurt them. He denounces her as a serial absenteer and orders her to get her ducks in a row because she isn't a student on a gap year. But Krisha continues to smoke in silence until she snaps back that he hardly makes life easy for Vicki and that he should consider himself lucky that she has not turfed him out of the house.

Worried that she is blowing her last chance of reconciliation, Krisha paces the confined kitchen space, with the camera circling round her as she tries to remain calm. Dashing upstairs, Krisha has a shower and dries her hair before putting on some make-up and a figure-hugging red dress. As she rejoins the family, Robyn wheels their mother (who suffers from dementia) into the front room and Krisha is relieved that she remembers her prodigal daughter. She apologises for not seeing much of her before slipping away to phone Richard, who is either her addiction sponsor, her lover or both. However, he is sending his calls to message.

Feeling exposed and alone, Krisha smuggles a bottle of wine into her room and uses a pair of nail scissors to push down the cork. She drinks deeply, while trying not to catch sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. As Nina Simone's rendition of `Just in Time' blares out from the record player, Krisha meanders downstairs and looks around the room. Despite a woozy sensation, she attempts to remove the turkey from the oven. But it proves too heavy for her and, in excruciating slow-motion, it falls to the floor with a cascade of hot oil.

Robyn and Vicki rush to retrieve the carcass, as Doyle makes wisecracks about salvaging him a leg. But no one wants Krisha to help and she is escorted to her room. After a while, she creeps back down and sees Chaise showing his parents the wine bottle he has found. Doyle accuses her of being a lush who can't stop herself from spoiling things. But she hardly has the wit or will to fight back and is led away before she can apologise to Trey. He brands her an embarrassment and she slumps in front of a television to watch a video of one of his childhood birthdays before falling asleep.

Waking with a start, Krisha calls Richard and leaves him a stinging message about abandoning her when she needed him most. She declares him dead to her and she wishes she had never had anything to do with him. Shuffling across the sofa, Dingo tries to console her. But he growls when Krisha squeezes him too tightly and she grabs his neck in annoyance before letting go and welcoming his non-judgemental affection. Girding herself, she descends the staircase to find the family gathered around the table enjoying an alternative feast. She asks to join them, but Robyn shepherds her out of the room and bundles her back into her bedroom.

She castigates Krisha for wasting her last chance, while wetting a flannel to cool her face after she throws up. Trying to remain calm, Robyn reveals that Trey had begged her not to invite his mother and that she had gone out on a limb in vouching for her. Krisha insists that she had been sober and had worked hard on turning her life around, but Robyn finds it hard to believe her, even though she still loves her. Making herself the victim, Robyn declines to ask Krisha about her struggle or what drove her to make such a ruinous miscalculation. Instead, she returns to the party, leaving Krisha to open another bottle and sniff the contents of some blue capsules.

Her sister's words ring around her head, but with little of the confused compassion with which they were first uttered. Consequently, Krisha is feeling belligerent as she stumbles down the stairs and sidles into the dining room. She makes another attempt at apologising. But, when Robyn asks her to leave, she lurches towards Trey and implores him to tell her that he loves her. He berates her for deserting him and insists that he is no longer her son. Rounding on Robyn, Krisha begins smashing crockery and lambasting her for turning Trey against her. But, as she is wrestled out of the room, Krisha knows she is beaten and stares at herself once more in the mirror. As the image begins to blur, however, the faintest hint of an enigmatic smile plays on her lips.

This is such a family affair that Shults even found room for the canister containing the ashes of the grandfather who suggested that Krisha was named after the daughter of the family that sheltered him an an escaped POW during the Second World War. But, while the mise-en-scène is full of such keepsakes and trinkets, the influence of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) is as readily evident as that of John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence (1974). Indeed, Krisha Fairchild's performance echoes that of Gena Rowlands, as she dominates the action without letting the audience know the first thing about the issues that drove her to drink and drugs and, subsequently, estranged her from her family.

The absence of backstory occasionally frustrates, as this is essentially a recreation of Nica's failed bid to win back her family, which culminated in her attempting to remove the turkey from the over with her bare hands. That pain pervades proceedings, as it is clear that Krisha is not the only one suffering. But, while speculation is a key part of spectacting, it would be nice to know a bit more about the circumstances that prompted Robyn to take responsibility for Trey and what Krisha has been doing with herself since she last saw her child.

Despite being somewhat upstaged by the mordant Bill Wise, Shults does enough to suggest that his talents are not confined to behind the camera. But it's his direction that leaves the deepest impression, as he takes ownership of clichés and makes intrusive use of close-ups and unforgiving lighting to expose his characters to the harshest scrutiny. Cinematographer Drew Daniels achieves some effective pans and glides within the high-ceilinged, but still claustrophobic interiors. But the aspect ratio shifts (from 1.85 to 2.35 and 1.33) seem a touch self-conscious, unlike Shults's jagged editing, Tim Rakoczy's unsettling sound design and the skittish bursts of percussion, strings and electronica on Brian McOmber's audacious score.

A very different mental health issue pervades Ruth Beckermann's distinctive minimalist documentary, The Dreamed Ones, which chronicles the 20-year relationship between poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Best known for a trilogy on memory and identity that was comprised of Return to Vienna (1983), Paper Bridge (1987) and Towards Jerusalem (1991), Beckermann has specialised in Jewish topics and the Holocaust and the perniciousness of postwar anti-Semitism prove crucial to understanding Celan's difficulty in finding a niche within the French literary establishment. But Beckermann presumes far too much foreknowledge in piecing together his story from epistolary fragments whose significance is enhanced by the interaction of the young stage performers reading them in a sparsely furnished recording studio.

A series of opening captions sets the scene by explaining how 27 year-old Paul Celan (who had been born Paul Antschel in the Romanian city of Czernowitz) arrived in Vienna after his mother had perished in a Ukrainian concentration camp and befriended Ingeborg Bachmann, who was six years his junior and who never mentioned the fact that her war veteran father had been a member of the Nazi Party. We then repair to a studio inside the Funkhaus radio station in the Austrian capital, where Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp stand close to old-fashione microphones to read extracts from a 20-year correspondence that begins with fond feelings after Paul relocates to Paris and he longs to see Ingeborg again.

A technician enters to adjust Rupp's mike and he studies his script before the letters resume with Celan's peevish frustration that Ingeborg has not come to Paris and she responds by apologising and reassuring him that she has not found anyone new. She has been worried by his silence and fears that he may no longer want her. But she is keen to convince him that her feelings remain strong and that she is desperate to be in his presence and feel his touch once more.

Plaschg and Rupp make roll-ups on some steps outside the studio. She teases him for making such a fat cigarette and laughs at his suggestion that she could play the piano for him to sing. Back inside, Ingeborg reveals in the autumn of 1950 that she has suffered a nervous breakdown and finds Four Power Vienna more difficult to endure than its wartime version, when people never knew whether their houses would survive bombing raids. She curses the poverty that has laid her low and urges Paul to arrange the visa that can bring her to Paris. But her visit proves a short one and she is soon back in Austria and hoping that she can remain in his heart.

Taking another break, Plaschg describes her frustration at working with people who don't understand her avant-garde composing style. They walk along corridors (with the camera following) to a rehearsal studio, where she feels sorry for the members of the orchestra who have so much talent, but are too used to doing what they are told to express themselves in an individual manner.

Back in 1951, Ingeborg is finding it hard to cope with her first success as a poet and is nettled when Paul reminds her not to get carried away by the compliments. She is aware that he is sceptical about her talent and wishes she was less in awe of his own work. But she insists she finds solace and inspiration in them and would be unable to live without them. He responds that he uses poetry as a mask to hide his inadequacies and implores her to forget what once existed between them because it can never be recaptured and he no longer knows how to make her happy. Ingeborg is hurt by the knowledge that Paul is not in love with her and, yet, she cannot break away from him and hopes that he will continue to correspond as friends.

Plaschg becomes tearful as she reads Ingeborg's lament at being discarded and at being helpless to change a situation that pains her. She goes downstairs to smoke alone, while Ingeborg declares her dismay that Paul has requested the return of a ring he once gave her, as it has a family significance that he feels will be diminished if she keeps it. Puzzled by his desire to distress her, Ingeborg reassures him that she wishes to retain his good opinion, but is not sure what the future will hold for her after she moves to Italy.

Sitting in the studio, Rupp and Plaschg discuss why Ingeborg often wrote letters that she didn't send. He says he would much rather know what someone thinks about him, even if it is wounding. But she suggests that Ingeborg poured out her heart as a means of coping with emotions she could no longer contain on realising that their relationship, as well as their romance was over.

Over shots of rain on a car windscreen as it drives through Vienna at night, captions reveal that Paul married graphic artist Gisèle de Lestrange in 1952, while Ingeborg relocated from Rome to Munich five years later. Yet, there is no mention of the fact that Paul bitterly resented the fact that Ingeborg was awarded a prize in 1952 by fellow members of the Gruppe 47 collective including Heinrich Böll, Ilse Aichinger and Günter Grass, when he received only six votes. Instead, we are informed that Paul and Ingeborg met again for the first time in six years at a literary conference in 1957.

Seeing her again clearly had a devastating effect on Paul and he wrote several impassioned letters pleading with her to resume their correspondence. She felt guilty about the fact that he was married with a child and didn't want to go behind Gisèle's back. But she liked the idea of being `the dreamed ones' again and keenly anticipated his visit to Munich while she was preparing to move into a new apartment. He joked about helping her `search for the lamp' and Rupp and Plaschg smile at each other as they read words pregnant with intimate meaning.

The camera follows them to the canteen for lunch, but remains behind a sliding glass door as they chat. Back in the studio, Plaschg plays the piano while Rupp reads a letter in which Paul confesses that he was so pleased to see a young woman in his train compartment pause to read her new poems in a newspaper that he had to blurt out that he knew and loved the writer. He hopes that Ingeborg doesn't take offence at such an indiscretion and realises how sorry he is for wasting so many years and for not realising the extent of his feelings in time. The actors smile at each other while reading the lines, as Paul begs Ingeborg to visit him and, despite feeling sorry for Gisèle, she longs to run to him.

Taking another cigarette break on the steps, Plaschg shows Rupp the cube tattoo on her right forearm and tries to explain its symbolism of being open to new experiences. They get the giggles when he complains that he has unmanly arms and she admits to disliking another inking on her bicep. Once in the studio, they read letters from 1958 in which Ingeborg comes to Paris to see Paul, who is depressed by the political situation across Europe.

Between recordings, Rupp and Plaschg discuss the correspondence and he concurs with Paul's contention that it is only possible to understand the truth of things by losing one's own grasp on reality. She agrees there is something beautiful about losing one's mind and they laugh before lying on the studio floor to listen to a recording of James Brown performing `It's a Man's Man's Man's World' in Paris in 1967. Above them is a painting of a couple reclining on a riverbank and Plaschg reaches her fingers into the air, as though conducting the music and surrendering herself to the moment.

Despite her continued love for Paul, Ingeborg wrote to inform him in 1958 that was was moving to Zurich to live with Swiss author Max Frisch. Having been forced to take a job teaching German at L'École Normale Supérieure, he was in no mood to be gracious about her decision and, while they sometimes spoke on the phone and kept sending letters, Ingeborg detected a distant tone in Paul's words and she appears uncertain whether he was spurned as a lover or as a proprietor.

The answer seemed to come in late 1959, when Paul sends Ingeborg a review of his latest collection that he insists is anti-Semitic. She replies to praise his work and reassure him that he is a much-loved writer. But Paul wanted more and tried to contact Ingeborg and Frisch in order to discuss what he felt was a desecration of his family's graves. However, he was so dismayed by the time they took to reply and the platitudinous nature of their words that he ordered her to stop writing to him, as he needed to process her betrayal before resuming their friendship.

Anguished by his attack, Ingeborg tries to make amends. But he lashes out again and accuses her of being too interested in being a literary celebrity to bother with his mental state. She wishes she could prove that she loves him and wants the best for him. However, Ingeborg refuses to hide her disappointment with his petulance and asks whether she is a phantom lover in his imagination or a creative, independent and lauded reality that he is not willing to acknowledge, as his own star dims. She warns him that he will lose much more than a devoted friend if he fails to change, but he leaves a long silence before contacting her in 1963, the year after Frisch had cheated on her.

He tried again in 1967, but Ingeborg seems not to have responded to his appeal for a few lines of friendship. Consequently, he slipped into the depressive cycle that prompted the 49 year-old to drown himself in the River Seine on 19 April 1970 (although 15 days were to pass before his body was recovered at Courbevoie, to the north of Paris). A closing caption reveals that the 47 year-old Ingeborg was badly burned in a house fire (probably caused by a cigarette) in Rome on 26 September 1973 and passed away three weeks later on 17 October.

As Plaschg reads a final passage, in which Ingeborg admits that Paul was the love of her life, we are shown a photo of Celan and Bachman posing as passengers in a biplane cut-out. But, for all its intriguing ingenuity, this stylised account of their romance rarely soars. Beckermann and co-scenarist Ina Hartwig are too close to their subject to make allowances for a less informed audience and the enormous gaps in Paul and Ingeborg's own story - let alone the literary circles in which they moved and the troubled times they endured - render this a frustrating intellectual (and emotional) experience.

Dramatically, Rupp and Plaschg prove much more interesting, as they rustle their scripts in front of the microphone while relating to each other and their text. But, such is the regimentation of Beckermann's séance conceit - she similarly set 1996's East of War in a single exhibition hall, but had intended to intersperse the recording with images filmed at Celan and Bachman's - that there is only so much they can do during improvised breaks (that involve Plaschg sprawling on a red sofa and tinkling the ivories of a grand piano, while Rupp makes some scribbled notes in a well-thumbed paperback) to bring other facets to their characterisations. They are adroitly abetted by Johannes Hammel's laudably unobtrusive framing and camerawork, as well as by Dieter Pichler's measured editing. But the entire enterprise creaks with an archly arty calculation that reinforces the all-pervaded sense of self-satisfaction. Some grim statistics are presented at the end of Min Bahadur Bham's The Black Hen. During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal between 1996-2006, 13,246 people were killed, 30% of whom were civilians and 12% of these were children. A further 14,000 migrated to India or were internally displaced, while more than 8000 children dropped out of school and either volunteered or were coerced into military service by the rebels. The conflict is an ever-present reality in this stark saga, which is set in the remote north-western mountain village of Mugu in 2001. But a vein of disarming humour helps relieve the tension in a manner that recalls the offbeat naturalist cinema that was produced in countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan around this period.

During a ceasefire in the so-called `civil war', the headman of Mugu announces via a tannoy that the King of Nepal will soon be passing through the village. He invites the residents to submit their chickens for a fair price in order to provide the monarch and his retinue with a suitable feast. A militia commander takes tea from the headman's teacher granddaughter Uzhyale (Hansa Khadka), who is preparing for her forthcoming wedding, and he warns that the Maoists are using the lull to build up their reserves.

As Suresh and his shopkeeper father deliver their birds, classmate Prakash (Khadka Raj Nepali) tries to hide his prized white hen from his father (Jit Bahadur Malla), who is the headman's lower caste servant. His sister Bijuli (Benisha Hamal) reminds him that their late mother used to keep chickens and she hopes that they can make enough money from its eggs to complete their studies. However, their father is irritated by the fact the fowl clucks in the night and orders Prakash to keep it out of their humble hut.

Desperate to expand her horizons, Bijuli agrees with the Maoist commander giving a propaganda lecture that the current education system needs reforming. But, while she remains entranced, Prakash and his best friend, Kiran (Sukraj Rokaya), are bored by the guerilla quartet marching and saluting to a tinny patriotic song in an amusingly earnest dance routine. They go off in search of mischief, despite the fact that the headman dislikes his grandson associating with an Untouchable. So, when he sees Bijuli returning from the meeting, he admonishes her for listening to subversive lies.

The next morning, Uzhyale stands with her class as the Nepalese flag is hoisted over the playground and the children sing the national anthem. But Kiran is unhappy because Suresh beats him in a blindfold challenge to win a film poster and Prakash doesn't have the time to cheer him up because he wants to hurry home to pet the hen he has now named Karishma after a Bollywood actress. Bijuli urges him to take care of the bird, but slips away in the night with a torchlight escort to join the Maoists and the headman is dismayed to discover that five local children have vanished, along with six from Tuma village and eight more from Dhuma.

On the morning Karishma lays her first egg, Prakash gets a phone call at the store from Bijuli, who promises to return in time for the Dashain festival. Her father is furious with her and takes out his frustration on Prakash, who has a curious dream about being dressed in ceremonial white and walking in a circle round the cloisters of a temple to the sound of chanting and the sombre tolling of a bell. He stares into the camera and wanders in slow-motion past some Buddhist monks in their saffron robes, some militiamen with their guns and some Catholic monks and nuns praying in the courtyard. A man gesticulating as he reads aloud from a book is carried reclining through the scene past a shepherd dyeing the wool of a white sheep with some mud.

Waking to find Karishma on his chest, Prakash kisses her before heading for school. While strolling with Kiran, however, they see a white hen tied to the back of a donkey and he rushes home to find she is missing. When his father denies having seen her, Prakash crosses a chain bridge to reclaim his pet. But an old man named Tenzing from Kimri informs him that he paid 600 rupees for the hen to feed his pregnant daughter. However, he promises to sell the bird back if Prakash can raise the money in three days.

He has the 200 rupees that Bijuli left under his pillow and Bilan promises to steal some money from his grandfather's prayer room. They also try to make a quick killing by selling tickets for a film show. But few can afford the admission and the exhibitor is disappointed with their efforts. Wearing the coat given him as a gift by Uzhyale's fiancé, Surbir (Bipin Karki), Kiran concludes that they should steal Karishma and dye her feathers with wet mud and tell Prakash's father that they purchased her for 300 rupees. He seems to accept they have got a bargain, but he is soon cross because the hen clucks indoors.

At school the next day, Prakash and Kiran are made to stand touching their toes as punishment for getting into a fight with Suresh. The wind makes their trousers flap, but Prakash has to strip naked apart from his hat when Karishma escapes into a thorn bush and Kiran uses his clothes to cover his hands and face in clambering between the branches to capture the fugitive hen. Prakash uses the bird to cover his modesty, as Kiran emerges from the foliage and jokes that he looks cool. However, the pair are dragged away from school during a tug of war because Tenzing has reported the theft of his hen.

When they go to their secret hiding place, however, they discover that Karishma has been stolen. They track her down to the shop run by Suresh's family and learn that Jit (Pravin Khatiwada) - a rascal who works alongside Prakesh's father - has used the bird to buy drinks. Tenzing departs with his property and word soon spreads that Prakash is a thief. He is taunted by Suresh when he goes to the pump for water and cries at having lost his beloved hen.

Keen to keep him out of mischief, Prakash's father finds him plenty of chores to do, while he cleans Maoist slogans off whitewashed walls. But the boy perks up when Kiran gives him a cast-off jacket and the film projectionist arrives to show his picture. During the show, Uzhyale and Surbir sneak away to kiss for the first time. But he is abducted by the rebels during the marriage ceremony (after Bijuli points out the headman's house) and Uzhyale is worried that he has not been taken away for routine questioning. As he waters his horse, Prakash sees Bijuli standing guard on the other side of the gorge and he rushes across the suspension bridge to ask her when she is coming home. She gives him the money to buy back the hen, but urges him to tell no one he has seen her.

That night, the headman tells Kiran that they are moving to the city because it has become too dangerous to stay in the country. He also orders him to keep away from Prakash, whose father is telling him much the same thing when Jit arrives with news that the shop has been closed because the militia suspect Suresh's family of passing messages to the Maoists. Pouring drinks, he says he intends taking over the store and making a tidy living. He gloats as Suresh and his sister Durga leave with their parents, but sits on the edge of the bench in front of the shop and it tips up and deposits him in the dust.

Shortly afterwards, Kiran's mother dies and the headman decides to relocate as soon as possible, especially as the militia commander believes that the ceasefire is about to break. He is searching for Bijuli and warns her father that he will show her no mercy. This threat prompts Prakash to retrieve the hen, as he believes his sister will only return if Karishma is safe. Kiran offers to accompany him and they ride to Kimli on the back of the headman's white horse. Exasperated to see them again, Tenzing informs the pair that he ate the hen days ago. But he is so touched by their distress that he admits he sent it to his daughter in Serog.

Prakash is eager to make the journey, even though the village is several miles across the war zone. Aware that their friendship will come to an end after he moves to the city, Kirwan insists on going on one last adventure and they set off across the rugged terrain. Passing over a bridge cut into the hillside, they wash in the fast-flowing water and camp for the night. Prakash coughs when Kiran lets him try a cigarette and regains his composure by boasting what he would do if they were confronted by ghosts, black bears or Maoists. He shares his food with Kiran and fetches him some water when he gets the hiccups and he reciprocates next morning when Prakash scratches his face.

Stopped at a checkpoint, they give the names of Suresh and his buddy Birey before spinning a yarn about needing the chicken so that a shaman can cure an ailing grandfather. The militiamen let them through. But, as they ask a woodsman for directions, Prakash reveals that he has seen Bijuli since Subir was kidnapped and the friends began to fight. As the stranger tries to pull them apart, gunfire rings out and the man falls to the ground with a bullet in his chest. The boys scatter in panic and see Subir's corpse lashed to a tree. Running across some Maoist casualties, Prakash pulls Kiran down and smears his face with blood before telling him to play dead.

The ruse works and they reach a lake without further incident. Prakash is ready to go home, but Kiran refuses to let him quit. They bathe naked in the lake and press on to Serog, where they find Karishma in a basket. However, she has five tiny chicks and Prakash insists that she stays to care for them, as the radio announces the imposition of a state emergency after 64 are killed in a Maoist attack. As the film ends, a static long shot shows refugees crossing a field behind a shrine decorated with fluttering flags. The camera closes in on the monument, as the image fades to suggest the period of darkness and uncertainty that is about to begin.

Drawing on his own recollections of the insurrection, Min Bahadur Bham and co-writer Abinash Bikram Shah succeed in capturing the unique ability that children have to remain preoccupied with the seemingly insignificant in a time of crisis. Convinced that Karishma is a clucking amulet to protect him against harm, the excellent Khadka Raj Nepali risks his friendship with the equally impressive Sukraj Rokaya and even death to recover her before realising that she has been called to a higher purpose than his comfort.

Standing as a symbol for everything from juvenile innocence to sullied experience and hope for the future, the hen is a scene-stealing natural. But the Nepalese landscape also catches the eye in the evocative bleached-out images composed with wit and finesse by Kazakh cinematographer (and co-editor) Aziz Zhambakiyev. Menuka Rai's authentically spartan production design and Jason Kunwor's score also make their mark, as Bham proves himself to be a skilled storyteller, courageous social commentator and a consummate artist.

Backwater livestock is also the theme of Imam Hasanovs debut docu-fiction, Holy Cow, which follows the efforts of an impoverished farmer to bring a European cow to the Azer village of Lahic because it produces more milk and healthier calves than the local breeds. Making a fine companion to Peter Gerderhag's Women With Cows (2011) and Andy Heathcote's The Moo Man (2013), this may not be the most complex or instructive study of animal husbandry in the remote foothills of the Caucasus mountains. But, even as this affecting exercise in scripted reality strains for credibility in its later stages, it still offers some intriguing insights into the concept of progress and Azerbaijan's sense of geopolitical identity.

The opening shots reveal the extent to which Lahic lies in the middle of a snow-covered nowhere, as Tapdyg struggles to get a signal on his mobile phone to discuss buying a European cow to boost his income. He orders a booklet on cattle breeds and annoys his wife Emish by stapling a picture of a black-and-white Friesian to the flimsy wooden walls of their bare necessities home. Young son Jalish would rather draw a Christmas tree, but his older brother, Ata, dutifully produces a picture of a cow to put above his bed.

Following Friday prayers, Tapdyg's neighbours prove less impressed, with Aksakkals quoting a certain Professor Bagir's views on ethnic purity and actress Nasiba Zaynalova's contention that Lahic had a distinctive character that should never be changed. His companions agree that it would be ruinous to import foreign animals, although one suggests that an exception might be made in the case of women. Emish also has her misgivings and certainly doesn't want to be ostracised over a cow. She insists that the money would be better spent on their sons, who follow their father around, as he prepares a shed for the new arrival and works hard in the meadows sloping down to the slow-moving river to create a sizeable grass store. So low is Tapdyg's stock with his neighbours that he stays away from a festive bonfire party with firecrackers and dancing and leaps over his own little blaze in the hope that his Inshallah wish for a job that will enable him to buy the cow comes true. But the strain begins to tell, as Emish puts a hanging over the picture on the wall and pleads with her mother-in-law to make him see sense. Ata and Jalish also begin squabbling about whether their father will save enough to fulfil his dream, with the latter being worried that the beast will be so big that it will eat them all.

At the village café, no one will sit with Tapdyg because he has gone all European and he sits with his head in his hands as his sons and their friend bounce coloured balloons around him. When Christmas comes around again, he tries to reassure his weeping wife that he is doing this to make her life better not worse. But, while Aksakkals and his pals stand in the snow and denounce this alien creature that will need to have special food dropped by plane, one of their group suddenly voices his support for Tapdyg and avers that it would be good for Lahic to diversify a little and recognise that it's part of the wider world. His cronies dismiss him as a rambling buffoon and shuffle off to visit the nursing home and wish everyone the joys of the season.

After three years and having borrowed some money from a friend who begs him not to let anyone know he has helped out, Tapdyg shaves, puts on a suit and sprays himself with cologne before going to collect the cow, which he names Madona. He cuts a deal at the market and loads her into the back of a rickety truck whose floor is so brittle that he has to stop and buy a piece of plywood to reinforce it. Nevertheless, he proudly leads Madona up the path and feeds her in her stall as his sons look on. They are fascinated, but Emish watches from a distance, as she has yet to be convinced that her husband has made a wise choice, especially as they now have a third son to feed in Emin.

Leaving his wife to take care of the boys, as well as their sheep and chickens, Tapdyg devotes himself to Madona. He gives her a headband to protect her from evil eyes and brushes and strokes her because she is already pregnant. It's not revealed whether he bought her in this condition or whether he found someone willing to breed their bull with her, but the locals are up in arms and Emish is thoroughly fed up with being the subject of so much gossip. But, when Madona goes into labour, Emish rallies to the cause - although the camera is kept outside the shed and is only allowed to see the newly arrived Alyona after mother and child have bonded.

As Ata and Jalish throw snowballs in the yard, their parents tend to the cows and we next seek Tapdyg fixing electric sockets to the wall of their extended kitchen so they can plug in their new fridge and stove. No details are given on how and why Tapdyg has been able to prosper, but Aksakkals calls to offer his blessing and wish the family well for the future. As Tapdyg exercises Alyona in the paddock, Ata and Jalish push Emin on a swing suspended from the roof, while Emish checks on the latest batch of cheese.

Tapdyg travels by bus to sell this at the market and cuts such a big deal that he is able to buy Emish a new top to thank her for her hard work. In the village, Aksakkals and his pals concur that they left the Soviet Union a long time ago and should now consider themselves European. One veteran declares that the authorities should do more to help the people and suggests introducing bison to make use of the sloping pastures. But success breeds its own problems Alyona has grown so big in eight months that Tapdyg can't afford to feed her for the winter. So, with Madona expecting another calf, he decides to sell Alyona to a sympathetic neighbour and the film ends with him leading the heifer along the busy main road into Lahic.

It's only as the closing credits roll that one begins to suspect the full extent to which this engaging picture has been stage managed. Documentarists have been tweaking the truth since Robert Flaherty first suggested ways of making reality more entertaining while filming Nanook of the North (1922). But, in seeking to show how the residents of Lahic have given their compatriots in the much-gentrified capital of Baku a lesson in how to embrace materialism without shattering tradition, Imam Hasanov appears to have played a little faster and looser than usual with the rules of non-fiction film-making. The nod to Romanian director Cristian Mungiu and Croatian cineaste Rada Sesic for their advice on the screenplay suggests that advice was taken on how to shape the material into a narrative, while the fact that Khanalil and Vafa Huseyni are credited as the leads (along with their sons Jalil, Atanali and Emin) seems to confirm that the action relies on a degree of role playing.

None of this matters in the long run, but it perhaps explains some of the gaps in the storyline and the fact that Hasanov was unable to film such key moments as Alyona's birth and the family's sudden run of good fortune. As a country boy who migrated to the city, Hasanov laudably seeks to show the interaction between individualism and communality and he is right to assert that there are many positive lessons to be learned from events in Lahic. But, while his rustic parable bears many similarities with the playfully austere realism of Iranian cinema either side of the Islamic Revolution, it isn't quite artful enough when it comes to covering its tracks. Nevertheless, the cast is endearing, while Sarvar Javadov's photography and the music by Le Trio Jourban are splendid.