Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 29/9/2016)

As the first Tibetan to graduate from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, Tseden (who is called Wanma Caidan in Chinese) has been kept under close surveillance, as he has not been afraid to address the concerns of his homeland since debuting with The Silent Holy Stones (2006), which explored the impact on the mind of an impressionable child monk of traditional Tibetan opera and a Chinese drama serial. Compared by Abbas Kiarostami with the work of Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson, this droll, but deceptively acute picture was followed by Soul Searching (2009), which was made under the auspices of Chinese Fifth Generation titan Tian Zhuangzhuang and was hailed as the first feature by a Tibetan director to be filmed in his own language on native soil with an entirely local crew.

Owing much to the spirit of Kiarostami, this road movie follows a film-maker holding impromptu auditions for an adaptation of the Tibetan opera, Prince Drimé Kundun, and reveals the extent to which the Autonomous Region has been exposed to outside influence. However, having captured city life, Tseden retreated to the countryside for Old Dog (2011), which charts the lengths an ageing shepherd is prepared to go to recover the beloved Tibetan mastiff that his wastrel son has tried to sell on the black market.

Languidly paced and drawing on the tradition of scroll painting, this lament for a culture under threat from Han Chinese largesse was followed by The Sacred Arrow (2014), an examination of the younger generation's fixation with new technology and the defiance of custom that takes its cue from the story of King Langdarma's assassination by the monk Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje. But, after this rather underperforming fable, Tseden has returned to form with Tharlo, which he was promoting when he was detained.

The action opens inside a regional police station, as Tharlo (Shide Nyima) demonstrates his phenomenal memory by reciting verbatim in Chinese a lengthy extract from Mao Zedong's `Serve the People' speech from 9 August 1944, which he learned as a nine year-old boy. Feeding the orphaned lamb he carries around in his satchel, Tharlo (who is nicknamed `Ponytail' because of his long hair) explains to Chief Dorje (Tashi) that he tends 375 sheep on the slopes outside the township (100 of which are his own) and has a special system for telling them apart.

Yet Tharlo can't remember his own age and struggles to understand why he needs an identity card when everyone knows who he is. He tells Dorje that he hopes to emulate Comrade Zhang Side (a soldier killed fighting the Japanese in 1944), as his death was supposedly heavier than Mount Tai because he had done his duty. But Dorje is more concerned that Tharlo obeys the law and dispatches him to the nearby town to get his photo taken for his ID.

Riding his moped to the Deryki Studio, Tharlo is asked to take a seat by the photographer (Dandrin Yantso) while she attends to a newly married couple posing awkwardly in front of a backdrop of Tiananmen Square. She sends them off to change into Western clothing before taking a snap in front of the Statue of Liberty and they ask Tharlo if they can borrow his lamb so they can relax in front of the camera.

Over her blaring radio, the photographer tells Tharlo that his hair needs washing and he wanders across the street to a hairdressing salon, where Yangtso (Yangshik Tso) gives him a dry wash. He enjoys the sensation of her fingers massaging his scalp and tells her all about his sheep before she rinses him off. As she blow dries him, Yangtso asks Tharlo about his name and informs him that he would be very handsome if he smartened himself up. He asks why she has such short hair and she flirtatiously responds that she keeps it that way in readiness for long-haired hunks like him.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Tharlo leaves hurriedly and pays over the odds. However, the photographer is still busy, so he sits outside on his moped to feed his lamb. Yangtso eats sweets while watching him from across the road, but is distracted by a customer as a cop sidles over to ask Tharlo why he is loitering. The photographer comes out to reassure the officer that Tharlo is not a thief and that he is waiting to have his ID photo taken. She ushers him inside and orders him to remove his hat, coat, satchel and amulet before urging him not to smile as she takes the picture.

Tharlo is surprised by the speed of the process, but has to wait outside while Deryaki makes a print. As he mooches on the pavement, Yangtso emerges from her shop with an ice cream. She repeats her contention that he is handsome and Tharlo smiles bashfully before she asks if he likes karaoke. Even though he needs to return to his flock, Tharlo accepts the invitation and leaves the lamb inside the salon to ride his moped through the nocturnal streets to the bar.

Once inside their private booth, Yangtso sings with more enthusiasm than talent. But Tharlo insists she has a lovely voice. A balloon pops on the wall behind him, but he is more taken aback when Yangtso lights a cigarette, as he is so unused to seeing women smoking. She offers him one of her brand, but he prefers his own roll-ups. As they drink, she encourages him to sing a folk song and he does so without the microphone. However, he gets a coughing fit after Yangtso sings another tune and they have to send out for a bottle of spirits to calm his throat.

The following morning, Tharlo wakes on Yangtso's sofa with a hangover. She joins him at the table and explains that he was so drunk that she had to carry him home while wheeling his moped. He asks about the lamb and she assures him that she fed it before they fell asleep. Standing behind him, Yangtso puts her arms around Tharlo's neck and suggests that they run away together and see such far away places as Lhasa, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and beyond. When he admits that he would like to see New York, Yangtso pleads with him to sell his sheep so they can be together. The lamb bleats loudly, as if in warning. But Tharlo is smitten and he hastens away after Yangtso kisses him.

Having bought some firecrackers and booze, Tharlo heads home. He gives Dorje his photo and, as he waits for a receipt, he mutters that he might have met a bad person in town. As he feeds the lamb, Tharlo tells his friend about the cop accusing him of being a thief and Dorje jokes that that is why he needs some ID. However, he seems puzzled when Tharlo asks if his card would be valid in Lhasa or Beijing.

Back in his humble shack, Tharlo sets off a couple of firecrackers when he hears wolves howling in the night. His dog barks, but he goes indoors to listen to old folk songs on the radio. The next day, he fetches water on his moped and lets the sheep out of their pen. He digs in his compound, while listening to a song about a mountain bird needing a companion and belts out the lyrics, as he sits on the pylon-dotted hillside with his flock

Resorting to spirits to cure another coughing fit, Tharlo lets off more fireworks to scare away predators. But, the next morning, he finds several carcasses in the pen (including his favourite lamb's) and he is devastated to have slept through the attack. The owner of the sheep (Jinpa) is furious with him for falling down on the job and slaps him across the face three times before loading the bodies on to his truck. Contemptuously, he throws one down for Tharlo to eat and he butchers it with a heavy heart before consuming the meat off his knife.

As the dense darkness descends, Tharlo struggles to light a fire and reaches the conclusion that there may well be something better awaiting him than the life he had always known and loved. Consequently, he rides back into town and plonks 160,000 yuan on Yangtso's counter. She is amazed and quickly hides it away before persuading Tharlo to part with his ponytail, as it draws too much attention.

He is keen to return to the karaoke bar, but Yangtso insists on going to a nightclub, where they watch famous singer Dekyi Tsering perform. Tharlo is unimpressed with the rap style and ignores Yangtso when she chides him for smoking roll-ups in front of her trendy friends. He starts to cough and she fetches him some hooch. However, it merely makes him possessive and he almost gets into a fight with one of her crowd when he tells him to keep his hands off his girl. Embarrassed by his rustic manners, Yangtso agrees to go to the karaoke bar.

When he wakes the next morning, however, Tharlo is dismayed to discover that Yangtso has disappeared with his money. He hurries to the club, but no one remembers her. The photographer is also unable to shed any light on Yangtso and the crestfallen Tharlo pops in to tell Dorje that he is no longer fit to die like Zhang Side and will perish as light as a fascist feather. Not bothering to ask why Tharlo is in distress, Dorje asks him to recite to `Serve the People' speech to impress his junior officers. But Tharlo makes several mistakes and Dorje tells him he should never have had his ponytail cut off, as he is only half the man. Moreover, he no longer looks like his ID photograph and he orders him to go back to town to get another one taken.

Shooing Tharlo away before he can report the crime, Dorje promises to catch the wolf that ravaged the flock. But Tharlo is no longer interested. He potters off on his moped, only to run out of petrol. He cuts a tiny, forlorn figure in a sprawling long shot, as he starts to push the bike. As the film ends, the camera hovers behind Tharlo, as he smokes and smashes his last bottle in frustration. The scene abruptly cuts to black as he lights a firework and holds it at arm's length. There's a double crack, but its significance is left unknown.

Expanded from Tseden's own short story and confirming his reputation for wry wit and scathing critique, this should do much to bring his current plight to wider attention. Some of the symbolism may be a little blatant, as Tseden exposes the pernicious effects of free market capitalism that have been introduced into Tibet by the occupying Chinese. But the satire is often as charming as it is cutting, with the sequence with the newlyweds betraying their country roots in front of a fake Statue of Liberty being particularly amusing. The karaoke interlude is also engaging. But Tseden avoids pitying Tharlo when he realises his folly, although there is genuine pathos in his inability to recall Mao's speech after he is duped by a gold-digger whose flattery is evidently superficial to everyone but Tharlo from the outset.

A huge star in Tibet, comic-actor-cum-poet Shide Nyima excels in his first feature lead, for which he agreed to be shorn of the ponytail he had been growing for 17 years. Singer Yangshik Tso also impresses on her screen debut, particularly with her caterwauling in the karaoke booth, although they both come close to being upstaged by the ever-hungry lamb in Tharlo's bag. The bleating forms a crucial part of Dukar Tserang's sound mix, which combines tellingly with Wang Jue's score to contrast the town and country soundscapes. Lu Songye's meticulously composed monochrome imagery is equally accomplished, as it creates the bleak beauty of the wilderness and the faux glamour of the neon-lit modernity against which this unflinching noirish study of identity, authority, alienation and clashing cultures plays out.

Another outsider is tempted to err after a chance encounter with an alluring woman in Christian Vincent's Courted. Best known in this country for teaming Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Auteuil in La Séparation (1994), Vincent has been steadily turning out watchable features since he debuted with La Discrète (1990). Centring on a jilted novelist who decides to base his next book on a random lover affair, this arch comedy starred Fabrice Luchini, who returns here to present another polished display of susceptible pomposity that earned him the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and Vincent the prize for Best Screenplay at the same event.

Such is judge Fabrice Luchini's reputation for being a difficult stickler that, when he reports for the first day of a new trial at the assizes in Saint-Omer in north-western France with a bout of flu, the courtroom officials know what to expect. Dubbed the `icy wind' because of his dour demeanour, he has been known to hand down severe sentences for comparatively minor offences. Moreover, he insists on wearing the ceremonial ermine and red gown that most of his colleagues have forsworn. But he is also something of a prude and is shocked while eavesdropping in the washroom to hear a rumour that he was seen leaving a brothel while taking a midnight stroll.

While the officials assemble, court artist Daniel Isoppo explains the protocol to rookie reporter Lucie Bibal and clerk Chloé Berthier informs those called for jury duty that Luchini will draw their names at random and adds that they can be rejected without a valid reason by either the defence or the prosecution. Hovering outside his chambers, Luchini meets with defence counsel Michaël Abiteboul, who apologises in advance for the fact that he will be appearing with an assistant (Jennifer Decker) and may need to keep popping out to take important phone calls about another client.

Eventually, everyone is ready and Luchini rings the warning bell and enters the courtroom with his associate judges, Magaly Godenaire and Bruno Tuchszer. As he dips into a vessel to draw the names of the jurors, he recognises Sidse Babett Knudsen and uses his cold as an excuse to compose himself during a brief recess. When he returns, she averts her gaze and concentrates on the accused, Victor Pontecorvo, who has been charged with kicking to death his seven month-old daughter with partner Miss Ming. Despite prompting from the bench, however, he refuses to declare anything but his innocence and Luchini feels compelled to stop for lunch.

As he is currently living in a hotel while wife Marie Rivière awaits their divorce, Luchini has to pop home for new on the imminent sale of their home. The dog is pleased to see him, but old retainer Marie Ansart ticks Luchini off for walking across her clean floor in dirty shoes. Rivière is perfectly civil, but makes it clear she wants to leave Saint-Omer as soon as possible. But Luchini's mind is firmly on Knudsen and he sends her a text inviting her for a drink after the session ends.

She is in a local café getting to know her fellow jurors. They go round the table and introduce themselves at the suggestion of Simon Ferrante, who admits to being a bit of a joker. Emmanuel Rausenberger tries to flirt with the women, while Serge Flamenbaum takes things very seriously and young Gabriel Lebret holds his tongue. Ferrante offers to give Fouzia Guezoum a lift because she relies on cousin Salma Lahmer to drive her around, but elderly Muslim Abdellah Moundy accuses Lahmer of showing disrespect to Guezoum's husband for refusing to let her share a car with a stranger.

When peace is restored, Knudsen reveals that she is a divorced mother of two who works as an anaesthetist at a local hospital. Rausenberger insists that she doesn't look old enough to have teenagers, but no one quibbles when project resident Corinne Masiero announces that she has grandchildren in her forties. He then turns his attention to Sophie-Marie Larrouy, a blonde bank clerk whose soldier boyfriend is fighting in Mali. Someone makes a comment about the terrorists beheading captives, but the mood lightens when the drinks arrive.

Back in court, Ming is called to the stand and it quickly becomes clear that she has intellectual difficulties. She claims to have returned home to find her baby dead on the bed, but can't remember whether Pontecorvo was drunk or which cupboard he thought he had locked the child inside because of its incessant crying. When Luchini remarks that blood was only found on the bed, Ming looks puzzled and she looks across at Pontecorvo for reassurance. She also flounders when Luchini asks why she waited 10 hours to report the accident and mumbles something about tossing the corpse in the canal and saying the child was missing. But she seems calmer when Knudsen inquires about the health of the son who arrived shortly after the tragedy and Ming lowers her eyes when she admits that Pontecorvo had yet to meet him.

Allowing the jury to digest her evidence, Luchini summons Ming's old babysitter, Christine Roland, and Pontecorvo's half-brother, Axel Floris, who respectively offer unstinting support, although Roland admits that she always thought Ming marrying Pontecorvo was a big mistake. A few welcome laughs are provided, however, by elderly neighbours Francis Cherquefosse and Jean-Marcel Crusiaux, who bicker on the stand about which part of their flat abuts Pontecorvo and Ming's place and what noises they heard and when.

The mood is more sombre in the jury room, however, as Godenaire and Tuchszer provide guidance on the testimony heard so far and warn against being distracted by the fact that Abiteboul is constantly leaving his place to hurry outside. As she listens, Knudsen receives a text from Luchini and she agrees to meet him after doctors Sylviane Goudal and Jean-Luc Ormières have given their opinions on the baby's intestinal problems and the fact that she could easily have been killed accidentally by a door flying open.

Hurrying along with his pull-along suitcase and a bagful of apples from home, Luchini finds Knudsen sitting alone upstairs at the café where she had lunched. She is concerned that their meeting might compromise her position on the jury, but Luchini assures her that there are precedents. He asks how she has been and reminds her that she had helped pull him through after he had required emergency surgery on his hip six years earlier. She dismisses his compliments and teases him about his red scarf and ermine gown and he is nettled into protesting that he is merely a poor dresser when she accuses him of being an exhibitionist.

Sipping his mineral water, Luchini asks Knudsen why she never replied to his letter after they had dined with his surgeon and his chatterbox wife. He recalls the dress she had worn and how beautiful she had looked. But Knudsen avoids giving a direct answer and blushes when he admonishes her for having such a sympathetic bedside manner. She tries to explain that they were both married and is relieved when she gets a phone call from her 17 year-old daughter, Eva Lallier. Luchini is delighted that they live alone and she smiles wearily at his cloying optimism.

Instead of heading straight home, Knudsen drops into the hospital and looks in on her patients, as Claire Denamur's acoustic ballad `Dreamers' plays on the soundtrack. On arriving home, she is quizzed about what Ming and Pontecorvo were wearing by Lallier, who joshes Knudsen about having dressed to impress by wearing a tight skirt. Knudsen makes light of her chatter and rolls her eyes when Lallier is distracted by her phone.

Approaching the courthouse the next morning, Luchini is waylaid by Ferrante, who informs him that he is eager to see if he has won his bet. Berthier explains that Lebret had turned up for court wearing combat boots and his fellow jurors had wagered against him being so insensitive two days running. Luchini can't resist checking as he waits to ring the bell. But he also shoots a glance at Knudsen, who responds with a demure smile.

The boots come up in evidence, as Luchini asks police lieutenant Raphaël Ferret about Pontecorvo's state of mind while giving his statement. He also asks what he was wearing on his feet when he was arrested and presses the inexperienced Ferret about why he and his superior so readily accepted Pontecorvo's claim that he had thrown the pair he had used to kick the infant to death into the canal. Leaving the cop on the stand, Luchini asks Pontecorvo and Ming to confirm how many pairs of boots he had and Ferret is left looking foolish when they confirm he only had one. But his ordeal isn't over, as Abiteboul questions the language that Ferret had used in the statement and demands to know why he had not quoted Pontecorvo verbatim. He also forces the hapless cop into conceding that he and his captain had put the notion of kicking into Pontecorvo's mind.

Knudsen is impressed by Luchini's thoroughness and notes how his air of authority is replaced by one of melancholy as he leaves the bench at the end of each session. More intrigued than enamoured, she agrees to a second date and has to apologise when Lallier invites herself along. Luchini is frustrated by her presence and the fact that she keeps tapping away on her phone. She teases him about treating the courtroom as a stage with the spotlight forever on him. But, while his pride is pricked by her sniping, Luchini is aghast when Lallier shows him the footage of the hearing that she had secretly recorded and he urges her to delete it to avoid causing a mistrial.

When Lallier slips away to take a call, Luchini commends Knudsen on raising such a spirited daughter. He confides that the trial will end the next day and admits to being concerned that he will lose contact with her if she is not selected for the next case. She looks intently at him across the table, as he begs her to remain in the gallery if she is dismissed, as he needs to be close to her.

Over a shot of the jurors placing the verdicts in a polished wooden box, Luchini explains the reasons why Pontecorvo has been acquitted. The implication is that he lied under oath to protect Ming and prevent his son from being born behind bars. But no further explanation is given.

As the film ends, Luchini swears in a new jury, with Knudsen sitting in the gallery wearing his favourite dress. She smiles when he looks up and the audience is left with the impression that they won't allow this second chance at happiness pass them by. But many viewers will also be puzzled by what they have just seen, as the tonal shifts make considerable demands while also keeping spectators at arm's length. Despite the verdict, the precise nature of the crime is never established and, while it is clear why Luchini would be attracted to Knudsen, it requires a little more suspension of disbelief to see what she sees in him.

Knudsen earned the César for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. But, while her character radiates warmth and affection, she is nowhere near as well drawn as Luchini's insular curmudgeon, whose despairing detachment from the alien world that parades through his court grounds the action, while his self-pitying sniffles attest to the gentle humour that permeates this often harrowing picture. The procedural episodes are particularly sobering, with Vincent bringing to mind Raymond Depardon's 2004 documentary, The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial. Laurent Dailland's detached camerawork and use of muted colours reinforces this aura of oppressive authenticity, which contrasts with the brighter hues and more intimate close-ups employed during Luchini and Knudsen's assignations (which drolly retain the form of cross-examinations).

Although the majority of the secondary roles are merely functional, the standard of the ensemble naturalism is first rate and helps root the daringly dark drama in the low-key register that so few slice-of-life features get right. But its Vincent's refusal to succumb to anything so mundane as a plot that helps this impeccably played film stand apart and there is much to ponder in Luchini's assertion that his job is more about applying the law than ascertaining the truth.

The inspirational teacher is a recurring screen character the world over and an Estonian educator gets to mould some receptive young minds in the Stalinist era in Klaus Härö's The Fencer. Chronicling a fugitive swordsman's bid to prove to his apparatchik principal that fencing is not a feudal and insufficiently proletarian pursuit, this might have been called Dead Sports Society. But, while it may seems a little conventional at times, this affecting biopic of fabled fencing master Endel Nelis capably captures the mood of suspicion and paranoia that pervaded the most northerly Baltic state in the immediate postwar period.

Following the Nazi invasion of Estonia in 1941, thousands of young men were drafted into the Wehrmacht (although many also volunteered to fight against the detested Red Army). They were declared traitors after the war and the Communist secret police continued to hunt down the conscripts into the early 1950s. Among them was Endel Keller, a decorated fencer who adopted his mothers maiden name, Nelis, after fleeing from the KGB in Leningrad.

In 1952, Nelis (Märt Avandi) applies to become a PE teacher at a small school in the remote Estonian town of Haapsalu. Noting the reference to fencing on his resumé, the principal (Hendrik Toompere) urges him to stick to modern sports more in keeping with Party ideology. But, as the local military base has first dibs on the school skiing equipment, Nelis struggles to connect with his classes and turns to fencing after the inquisitive Marta (Liisa Koppel) asks about the gold medal attached to the foil he keeps hidden in his locker.

Despite confessing to sympathetic colleague Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp) that he is not good with children, Nelis forms a Saturday fencing club and is surprised by the turnout at the first session. He demonstrates the basics of posture and balance and Marta and younger sister Tiiu (Elbe Reiter) prove just as enthusiastic as older boys Jaan (Joonas Koff) and Toomas (Egert Kadastu). Kadri reminds Nelis that many of the students lost their fathers during the war or saw them being taken away by the secret police and, consequently, he defies the principal's veiled threats to make swords from some sturdy reeds gathered from the coastal marshes.

As romance tentatively blossoms with Kadri, Nelis is warned over the phone by his former coach, Alexei (Kirill Käro), to keep his head down, as the KGB are still making inquiries. Nelis is also befriended by Jaan's grandfather (Lembit Ulfsak), who had fenced in his youth at the University of Leipzig. He gives Jaan his rapier and mask and speaks out at a school meeting when the principal and his subservient assistant (Jaak Prints) recommend scrapping the fencing club. The old man points out that Karl Marx had enjoyed the sport and the principal is so piqued when the parents vote to save the club that has restored a little purpose and pleasure to the fraught lives of their children that he instructs his underling to delve into Nelis's background.

Shortly afterwards, Nelis thinks he is being followed home. But Alexei has tracked him down with an offer to spar with a discreet patron who will protect him. Yet, despite packing his bags, Nelis remains on the station platform because he can't let his students down and Alexei rewards his dedication by sending two large crates of secondhand fencing equipment. The students are delighted and implore Nelis to allow them to enter a school competition in Leningrad. Aware of the danger he faces in returning to the city, he tells them they are too inexperienced for such a prestigious event and Marta hands back the gold medal he had given her in disgust.

A couple of days later, Jaan's grandfather is arrested and Kadri becomes afraid when Alexei calls to warn Nelis that the KGB are closing in on him. He explains that he was 18 when the Germans came and deserted as soon as he could. But he knows he is forever tainted and Kadri pleads with him to stay away from Leningrad.

Wandering into the gymnasium after hours, Nelis finds Jaan practicing alone and he is so moved by his courage that he agrees to enter the contest. He picks Jaan, Toomas and Lea (Ann-Lisett Rebane) for the team and makes Marta first reserve. Kadri prepares sandwiches for the long train journey and the children gaze at the Leningrad skyline through the grubby window. On arriving at the venue, however, Nelis is informed that the school will be disqualified unless he can borrow some electric épées. Fortunately, Armenian coach Shirin (Alina Karmazina) comes to his rescue and the team lines up against squads from some of the biggest cities in the Soviet Union. But, as Jaan and Toomas win their bouts, Nelis spots soldiers in the balcony and decides to escape.

As he descends a staircase, however, he bumps into the principal. Protesting that he is merely doing his duty, he assures Nelis that he has nothing against him and advises him to flee. But Nelis realises he is trapped and returns to the main hall as the Haapsalu underdogs win through to face Moscow in the final. All seems to be going well. But Jaan sprains his ankle while leading in the decisive bout and Marta has to step against an opponent who is almost twice her size. It goes into overtime, but Marta prevails with a last-second thrust and Nelis looks back with pride as he is led away by the police.

Following a caption proclaiming the amnesty that followed the death of Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953, Nelis alights from his train to be greeted by Kadri. Before they can embrace, however, Marta and Tiiu rush out from their hiding place on the platform and Nelis is soon surrounded by his adoring students. A closing note reveals that he lived to see Estonian independence and that the fencing club he founded is still going strong.

Klaus Härö is no stranger to period pieces and this latest venture into the past followed Elina: As If I Wasn't There (2003), Mother of Mine (2005) and Letters to Father Jacobs (2009) in being selected as Finland's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. In collaboration with production designer Jaagup Roomet and cinematographer Tuomo Hutri, he ably contrasts the spartan backwater gym with the Hammer and Sickle-swathed grandeur of the big city arena. Moreover, he sustains a palpable sense of unease, as Nelis treats each encounter with a stranger as a potential ambush.

Butt, despite the best efforts of comic actor Märt Avandi, Nelis remains something of an enigma, whose wartime exploits are never satisfactorily explained. Similarly, the love affair with the winsome Ursula Ratasepp is sweet, but schematic, while the bonds forged with Liisa Koppel and Joonas Koff seem too cursory to inspire a climactic act of reckless self-sacrifice. Yet, notwithstanding the sketchy nature of some of screenwriter Anna Heinamaa's storytelling, Härö's sense of pace and place is assured and deftly counterpointed by a Gert Wilden, Jr's liltingly sombre score.

Such was the success of Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) that it was inevitable that a second Iranian-themed horror movie would not be far behind and the London-based Babak Anvari has duly delivered with Under the Shadow, which draws on his own childhood during the Iran-Iraq War (1988-89), when he and his brother were left with their mother in Tehran while their father did compulsory military service. Riffing on the mythology of the evil spirits known as djinns that have cropped up in everything from The Koran to The Thousand and One Nights, this restrained allegory on female oppression takes its cues from Andres Muschietti's Mama (2013) and Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (2014). But, while Anvari is also clearly well versed in Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982), the influence of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (2002) also seeps into an insinuating saga that contains more than its share of seat-jumping jolts.

As the Iran-Iraq War continues to rage, Narges Rashidi attempts to convince medical school director Bijan Daneshmand to let her resume her studies. He explains that she is forbidden to return because it was discovered she had socialist leanings around the time of the Islamic Revolution. Furious at being treated like a second-class citizen, Rashidi removes her headscarf the moment she gets through her own front door. But doctor husband Bobby Naderi is disappointed with her for failing to win her argument and, in a fit of pique, she throws away her textbooks, with the exception of one that was inscribed by her recently deceased mother.

Shortly afterwards, Naderi informs Rashidi that he has been called up to spend a month on the frontline and implores her to leave Tehran and take their daughter, Avin Manshadi, to stay with his parents in the far north. Despite the growing incidence of air raids, Rashidi vows to stay put and continues to exercise to her illicit Jane Fonda workout video. But she becomes concerned that Manshadi has started having bad dreams after being told about djinns by Karam Rashayda, the refugee boy who lives downstairs, in spite of the fact that landlord Ray Haratian's wife, Aram Ghasemy, insists he is entirely mute.

Frightened because she has lost the ball of magic cat fur that Rayshada had given her, Manshadi clings ever more tightly to Kimia. Thus, when the air-raid siren sounds, she rushes back into her room just as a missile hits the building and miraculously fails to detonate, even though it remains embedded in the roof. As Rashidi tries to console Manshadi, upstairs neighbour Behi Djanati Atai asks her to use her medical skills to revive her father, Nabil Koni, who has had a heart attack. Despite administering CPR, the old man dies and, when Atai comes to tell Rashidi that she is returning to Kurdistan, she insists that her father saw something spectral in the room before he fell ill.

Rashidi hushes Atai in case Manshadi overhears. But she is unnerved when Ghasemy tells her about djinns being carried by the wind to infiltrate places where fear and dread linger and borrows a book on the subject from neighbour Soussan Farrokhnia, who often babysits for Manshadi. She confides that she is leaving for Paris with husband Hamid Djavadan to stay with their son and is worried about Rashidi's well-being when she bangs on their door in the middle of the night because she felt someone in the bed beside her (who spoke with Naderi's voice).

Anxious because Manshadi is running a fever, Rashidi takes her to see Arash Marandi, who was in her class at medical school. He examines the girl, but is more concerned about Rashidi's state of mind. On the way home, Rashidi sees Rashayda wandering along in the middle of the road. She gives him a lift and thinks she hears him tell her to find Kimia. They arrive at the tenement to find Haratian and Ghasemy ready to leave with their children and they wish Rashidi luck, as she will be alone in the damaged building.

Suddenly feeling afraid, Rashidi decides to leave. But Manshadi won't go without Kimia and they turn the bedroom upside down looking for her. When night falls, Rashidi thinks she sees a figure in the hallway and rushes into the living room in time to see it disappear through the crack in the ceiling caused by the missile. Grabbing Manshadi, she runs into the street and is arrested for having her head uncovered. Detained at the police station, she is only spared a punishment of lashes because someone speaks up for her.

Back in the apartment, Rashidi seals the crack using the masking tape bought to stop the windows from shattering. She goes on to the roof and sees that the tarpaulin covering the bomb crater has blown away and the medical book her mother gave her is lying out of reach in the rubble. While making supper, she also finds her missing workout video in the kitchen bin. But Manshadi pleads innocence and asks why she hasn't found Kimia.

Naderi phones and implores Rashidi to get out of Tehran. But, while he is talking, there is a loud knock at the door and Rashidi finds herself locked outside as a djinn in a swirling chador barges past her. Now truly terrified, she rushes to Manshadi's side. But she says she often sees the lady, who plays with her when Rashidi is too busy. She claims to know where Kimia is and says she would make a better mother because Rashidi can no longer cope.

Desperate to escape as quickly as possible, Rashidi searches the entire apartment for the doll. But Manshadi is not impressed and when she whispers under her breath that the lady was right, Rashidi slaps her and they start to fight. On regaining her composure, Rashidi goes to the locked drawer where she had kept her mothers book and is dismayed to find a dismembered Kimia inside.

Manshadi accuses her of destroying the doll, but Rashidi promises to bring her back to life with masking tape. Cuddling Kimia, Manshadi gets some sleep and Rashidi is relieved when her fever goes down. However, they are forced to make a dash for the air-raid shelter and are halfway down the stairs when Rashidi hears what sounds like Manshadi screaming from inside the apartment. Even though she knows her daughter is beside her, Ranshidi is so overwrought that she returns to the girl's bedroom and is nearly pulled under by a djinn flashing his white teeth in the darkness.

Unsurprisingly, Manshadi is upset at being abandoned and turns to her side to tell the chador lady that she is right about Rashidi being an unfit mother. Lunging at the chador, Rashidi finds herself in a cotton labyrinth and only just manages to prevent the spirit from stealing her child. But, as Manshadi reaches the basement steps, the floor starts to suck Rashidi under and she is only saved because her daughter reaches out to pull her to safety.

Hurrying to the garage, Rashidi bundles Manshadi into the car. As the bolt is stuck, she reverses into the gates and drives away. But, as they head north, the camera picks out the fact that Kimia has lost her head, while the pages of Rashidi's medical book flutter in the breeze on the tenement roof. The djinns may not be beaten after all.

Cannily designed by Nasser Zoubi and photographed and edited with unshowy assurance by Kit Fraser and Chris Barwell, this is a darkly thoughtful picture that makes its political points without neglecting its generic duties. With Jordan standing in for Iran, the sense of place and time is deftly established by the debuting Anvari in order to make Rashidi a victim of the Shah, the ayatollahs and Saddam Hussein. But, while a couple of the fright sequences are chillingly effective (thanks as much to some clever camera placements as any special effects), the cacophonic chaos caused by the air raids is just as disturbing, as it ties the story into the barbaric events currently taking place in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, when the damaged tenements creaks and groans and the unexpected pop of a toaster are added into the mix, Alex Joseph's sound design comes close to stealing the show.

Although the final battle with the djinns feels slightly anti-climactic, Rashidi and Manshadi excel as the mother and daughter whose relationship had started to sour before dolls went missing and djinns started making malevolent mischief. Rashidi does particularly well, as she makes her character so resistible during the preamble that it takes the audience a little while to take her side when hell is let loose and she discovers the full extent to which women are regarded as a necessary evil in an ultra-conservative patriarchal theocracy.

What a difference a name makes. Who would look forward to a new horror movie by Robert Bartleh Cummings? But Rob Zombie? Well, at least that's how things started out for the onetime heavy metal star when he tried his hand at directing with House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005). But since he fell in with the crowd rebooting the Halloween franchise, Zombie has rather lost his way and any hopes that his latest offering, 31, would be an improvement on The Lords of Salem (2013), are quickly dashed as it becomes thuddingly apparent that this muddled amalgam of ideas lifted from infinitely better films represents such a retrogressive step that even Zombie aficionados will have trouble believing it required all of the 20 days it supposedly took to shoot.

Opening with a monochrome prologue set on 31 October 1975 and depicting Pastor Victor (Daniel Roebuck) being slaughtered by Doom-Head (Richard Brake), the action fast forwards a year in time to see carnival workers Charly (Sheri Moon Zombie), Roscoe Pepper (Jeff Daniel Phillips), Panda Thomas (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), Venus Virgo (Meg Foster) and Levon Wally (Kevin Jackson) fall victim to a bunch of scarecrows manning a roadblock on a remote country road.

A couple of members of their troupe are killed, but they are quickly forgotten as the surviving quintet wake in Murder World and find themselves in the presence of Father Napoleon-Horatio-Silas Murder (Malcolm McDowell) and his acolytes, Sister Dragon (Judy Geeson) and Sister Serpent (Jane Carr), who are all wearing costumes that would not have been out of place at the Versailles of Louis XIV. Murder informs his guests that they have been captured to participate in a game of `31', which involves them having to remain alive for 12 hours in a specially created maze that is home to an assortment of crazed killers.

Suitably appalled at being confronted with Teutonic nut jobs, Sex-Head (Elizabeth Daily) and the stocking-wearing Death-Head (Torsten Voges), the five carnies try to work together to stay one step ahead of Pyscho-Head (Lew Temple), his hillbilly brother Schizo-Head (David Ury) and the Führer-obssessed midget, Sick-Head (Pancho Moter). Some of the gang literally lose their heads in trying to stay alive, but Doom-Head and his companion Cherry Bomb (Ginger Lynn) up the ante by introducing chainsaws to a game that seems to have the odds heavily stacked against the fugitives.

And that's it really - apart from playing Spot the Rip-Off (sorry, Homage). There seems little doubt that everyone had a ball making the movie and that Zombie can direct with wit and sadistic panache when the mood takes him. But he never knows when to stop and indulges in such gratuitous slashing and cornball bad taste that his idea of murderous mayhem soon becomes tiresome.

The more genre savvy will recognise that Zombie has been inspired somewhere along the line by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack's pre-Code adaptation of Richard Connell's short story, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). But many will also recognise the nods towards the likes of Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962), Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Oliver Stone's Seizure (both 1974), Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa's Dead End (2003) and Dave Payne's Reeker (2005).

Given the awfulness of the dialogue, the performances are bullish - but what once notable talents like McDowell, Geeson, Carr and Foster are doing in pulp like this is anyone's guess. Yet Zombie makes the most of his meagre budget to pack the action with gruesome splatter that speaks volumes for the talents of production designer Rodrigo Cabral, costumier Carrie Grace and effects make-up creator Wayne Toth. Cinematographer David Daniel and editor Glenn Garland also merit a mention. But, while this is largely so much nothing signifying sound and fury, it is pretty essential viewing for coulrophobiacs everywhere.

A decade has passed since Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones was knocked off his stride by the shellacking meted out to Basic Instinct 2 (2006). But he makes a steady comeback with Urban Hymn, a drama set during the aftermath of the 2011 summer riots that somehow overcomes the clichéd contrivances studding Nick Moorcroft's lackadaisical screenplay through the potency of some committed performances. A classic example of how a hot social issue and a clutch of good intentions rarely combine to create great cinema, this feels more like a soap opera storyline than a slice of everyday realism.

Black teenagers Letitia Wright and Isabella Laughland have been firm friends since they first met in a care home as young girls. Currently based in Alpha House in a nondescript part of London, they find themselves drawn into the shop looting during the riots sparked by the shooting of Mark Duggan. But, while Laughland seems content to be a long way down the road to nowhere, Wright inherited a love of Etta James and Northern Soul from her heroin addict mother and has ambitions to do something with her vocal talent.

She gets her chance when academic Shirley Henderson decides to gain some experience on the street in the hope of understanding the motives of the muggers who murdered her teenage son. Husband Steven Mackintosh feels the loss every bit as keenly, but he disapproves of his wife's decision to abandon a well-paid post to engage with those in danger of being allowed to slip through the cracks. New boss Ian Hart also has his doubts about Henderson's suitability for the task and she gets off to a bad start by entering Wright's room without permission and, thus, incurs the wrath of the combustible Laughland, whose use of bad language and violence shock Henderson after 15 years of quiet libraries and lecture theatres.

As they are approaching their 18th birthdays, Wright and Laughland need to find somewhere to live when they are released from Alpha House. However, as young offenders, they are at a distinct disadvantage and Wright accepts Henderson's offer to help with her housing application. She is also intrigued when she follows Henderson to the church hall where she sings in Matthew Steer's all-white, middle-class community choir. So, when she ventures into the hall the following week, Wright is pleased to be asked to join the ranks. But she asks Henderson to say nothing to Laughland and Hart also has his misgivings in granting his permission for Henderson to consort with Wright outside the home.

Steer recognises that Wright has talent and asks her to take a solo at a forthcoming. Moreover, Wright is brought to the attention of Shaun Parkes, who runs a music school for distinctive talents and he is keen for Wright to audition. But, just as everything seems to be slotting into place, Laughland is released from a short spell behind bars and discovers Wright's secret and accuses Henderson of trying to ruin their friendship. Torn between seizing her chance and being loyal to her oldest friend, Wright tries to get the best of both worlds.

She is so inspired by performing and by meeting singer Billy Bragg (who is out promoting his Jail Guitar Doors initiative), however, that she begins to drift away from Laughland, especially after they leave Alpha House and she moves into a cosy flat. But, when Laughland seeks a hiding place after getting into trouble, Wright can't refuse her, even though she turns the place into a crack den in her absence. Faced with an impossible decision, Wright makes her choice. But it's Henderson who pays the price when Laughland fatally stabs her on her suburban doorstep. Distraught at having lost his family in violent crimes, Mackintosh comes to see Wright perform and urges her to make Henderson proud

One of the principal problems with this well-meaning, but underwhelming film is that Letitia Wright simply lacks the presence or the vocal range to persuade anyone that she is a pop star in the making. Henderson can get as misty eyed as she likes, but Wright has a modest voice at best and there is nothing in the schmaltzy closing number to suggest distinctive musical talent. However, Caton-Jones and Moorcroft attempt to pass manipulative melodrama off as social realism throughout this schematic picture. The scenario may well be based on youthful experiences in Essex, but the dialogue is strewn with platitudes that patronise as much as Martyn Berg and Tom Linden's glutinous score.

Denis Crossan's cinematography is suitably downbeat, but Caton-Jones struggles to capture any palpable sense of place or care home atmosphere. The dependable Henderson simpers naively as the bleeding heart liberal out of her depth, but Hart and Mackintosh are wasted in caricatured support. By contrast, Laughland bristles with aggressive indignation as the damaged kid scared of being left behind by the one person she thought she could rely on. But her let-down no-hoper is as frustratingly one-dimensional as the rest of this mawkish saga.

Picture Barack and Michelle Obama starring in their own version of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) and you get a vague idea of what debuting writer-director Richard Tanne is attempting in Southside With You. Chronicling the first date between a future President of the United States and his First Lady, this could easily have descended into propagandist mush. However, with Obama coming towards the end of his tenure in the White House, this affectionate speculation packs less of a political punch than it once might have done and one can only hope that it doesn't spark a glut of copycat romances that embraces the Clintons and the Trumps.

Back in 1989, 25 year-old Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) was a junior lawyer at the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin. Despite her lively intelligence, she is often patronised for being both black and female and isn't entirely delighted to be asked to mentor summer associate Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), who is four years her senior. Thus, when he suggests spending Sunday together, she makes it clear that she does not consider their outing to be a date.

With Martha and the Vandellas playing in the home that Michelle shares with father Fraser (Phillip Edward Van Lear) and mother Marian (Vanessa Bell Calloway), Barack shows up in his bean-can yellow Datsun with a hole in the floor blasting Janet Jackson. Aware that her mother considers Barack a `smooth-talking brother', Michelle consents to attending an exhibition by African-American painter Ernie Barnes at the Art Institute.

Keen to find out more about her, Barack asks Michelle about her family and she reveals that she still lives at home with the parents who had set great store by education and had insisted on her learning French and the piano. By contrast, Barack feels hostility towards his father, who had perished in a car crash in Kenya. But, while his childhood in Jakarta and Hawaii had often been tough, he had enjoyed some mellow times in the 50th state and still likes a smoke.

As the conversation switches to their careers, Barack asks Michelle why she no longer does pro bono work and warns her about glory seeking through high-profile cases. Feeling nettled, she asks why he gave up his community programme for Harvard Law and, wishing to avoid a confrontation, he apologises for speaking out of turn. He suggests they go for a picnic lunch and Michelle insists on paying her share. They try to keep things light by discussing whether Innervisions of Talking Book in the better Stevie Wonder album and Michelle wanders off to dance to some African drummers playing in the park.

But the sights and sounds of the neighbourhood keep bringing them back to the problems of being black in modern America. Barack has agreed to speak at a public meeting in the Altgeld Gardens district and takes Michelle to the South Side church, where she is irritated by the congregation identifying her as his girl. However, she is taken by his appeal to keep faith in a project to build a community centre and, even though she suspects that he only brought her to the rally to make a good impression, she is struck by his ability to communicate and the ease with which he enthuses his hearers to remain united and find alternative ways of raising funds.

Amused by Barack's cockiness and the fact that he keeps sloping off to have a cigarette, Michelle agrees to go to a screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. However, they bump into senior partner Avery Goodman (James McElory) outside and their charged encounter (which Michelle fears will convince her bosses that she doesn't take her career seriously) results in them debating the depiction of black reality on the screen and how differently even the most liberal white Americans approach such topics as race, equality and justice.

Michelle asks Barack if has considered going into politics, but he merely shrugs. This isn't the time and place. Besides, as they stop off at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlour, he has other things on his mind and, having finally succumbed to his charm, Michelle lets down her guard long enough for a first kiss.

Studded with knowing references to the people Barack and Michelle would become and the offices they would one day hold, Tanne's screenplay does a decent job in treading the fine line between imagination and hindsight. Some of the insights are a little too prescient, but Tanne never allows the socio-political aspects of the conversation to distract entirely from the fact that Barack is clearly trying to make the most of what could be his sole opportunity to flirt with Michelle whenever possible.

Borrowing heavily from Linklater's walk-and-talk technique, Tanne and cinematographer Patrick Scola exploit the Chicago locations to make the backdrop relevant to the dialogue. However, Tanne is also indebted to editor Evan Schiff and composer Stephen James Taylor for making the tonal shifts so smooth, as Barack and Michelle get to know each other better.

Striving to avoid impersonation, Sawyers and Sumpter handle the more expository dialogue with aplomb (it's a `date', after all, and fact finding is a key part of making a connection). His voice is a touch too high pitched and he doesn't have the protruding ears that he jokes about. But Sawyers ably captures Obama's way of gesturing with his hands, while Sumpter combines Michalle's sense of style with her dignity and integrity. They also make a rather sweet couple. But, with racial tensions currently simmering one is left with an overriding sense of frustration that, for all the promise and potential on show in this engagingly calculating picture, the Obama presidency has been something of a disappointment.

There have been several documentaries about museums and art galleries over the past few years, but not even institutional maestro Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery (2014) could top Nicolas Philibert's observational masterpiece, La Ville Louvre (1990), when it came to capturing the behind the scenes atmosphere of a revered treasure house. Having lifted the lid on daily life at a major newspaper in Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011), Andrew Rossi obviously hoped he could repeat the trick in The First Monday in May. However, by dividing his attention between fashion curator Andrew Bolton's race to curate the 2015 exhibition, `China: Through the Looking Glass' and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's bid to snag celebrities for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's glitzy fund-raising gala, Rossi struggles to explore in sufficient depth the intriguing issues that each situation throws up. With its clashing cultural implications and ramifications, the subject is endlessly fascinating. But one suspects he would have needed a reality mini-series to do it justice.

Having made his mark at the Met with the record-breaking 2011 show, `Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty', the pressure is on Lancashire-born curator Andrew Bolton to repeat the trick with an exhibition charting the connection between China and Western fashion. Aware of the dangers of appearing patronisingly Orientalist, he asks Hong Kong film-maker Wong Kar-wai to serve as his artistic director. Bolton has his work cut out persuading Curator of Asian Art Maxwell K. Hearn that the enterprise has academic merit and will not be turning his galleries into a glorified catwalk for a bunch of haut couture enfant terribles. But he has the support of superior Harold Koda - who has become a familiar actuality figure, thanks to the likes of Lisa Immordino Vreeland's Diane Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) and Albert Maysles's Iris (2014) - and the backing of such fashion mavens as Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier and the hugely controversial John Galliano.

While Bolton ponders ways of combining Ming and bling, Wintour (who also hails from the UK) sets about turning the Met's annual gala into gossip column gold while retaining the super-rich highbrow cachet that will ensure the museum's coffers remain full for another year. Forever hidden behind shades and clutching a coffee cup, Wintour drolly plays on the fearsome image that Meryl Streep honed in David Frankel's 2006 adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's bestseller, The Devil Wears Prada. However, Rossi rather clumsily equates Wintour with the `dragon lady' characters essayed by Anna May Wong in the silent era, although he is not alone in finding the avoidance of racial and cultural stereotype problematic.

Looking and sounding like a younger version of Alan Bennett (complete with half-mast trousers), Bolton is clearly a clever and ambitious man. He adopts an air of foppish diffidence that enables him to get his own way when the chips seem stacked against him and it's amusing to contrast his stealth with Wintour's more forceful methods, most notably when she stalks around the new Vogue offices with a face like thunder.

Yet, as preparations for both the exhibition and the jamboree continue, Wintour's assistant, Sylvana Ward Durrett, emerges as the most compelling character, as she juggles the seating plan to keep A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber happy. She also has to negotiate over the phone with the representatives of Rihanna (who is performing at the bash), who seem to have no understanding of the concept of budget limitation. But, all the while that Rossi is lingering over such fripperies and minutiae, he is wasting time that could have been devoted to Wong Kar-wai and misgivings about the tonal balance of the show and gaffes like the desire to place one of Mao Zedong's tunic in a room full of Buddhist iconography.

Rossi also skates over an uncomfortable moment when a journalist quizzes Bolton and Wintour during a promotional trip to China about the aesthetic morality of the exhibition. But, when he sidelines Australian director Baz Luhrmann and affords John Galliano so much screen time without once addressing his infamous views on Hitler, one has to start wondering whether he or Condé Nast (the publishers of Vogue and producers of the documentary) are calling the shots that matter.

Ultimately, the two events come together relatively smoothly, thus, preventing Rossi from building up much suspense as the clock ticks down. He slips in a neat sequence of Bolton touring the galleries and making some superficial alterations, as the great and the good gather downstairs. But the stakes seemed higher as David Hoey puts the finishing touches to the Christmas windows in Matthew Miele's Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's (2013).

Jessica Oreck established herself as a documentarist with a unique view on the world with Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009) and Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys (2014). But she edges further towards experimentation with The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, a blend of anthropology and animation that uses the sights and sounds of Eastern Europe to explore the relationship between nature and civilisation, imagination and memory, and people, places and the past.

Over the 16mm footage photographed by Sean Price Williams, Pole Mariuz Wolf declaims quotations from such worthies as Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, theoretician Theodor W. Adorno, Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz and folklorist Vladimir Propp. Fading in and out of these passages is a retelling in Russian by Tatyana Zbirovskaya of the celebrated fairytale that has been illustrated by Devin Debrolowski and deftly brought to life by Michelle Enemark using a mix of stereoscopic perspectives and rostrum camera moves to focus on details and textures within the drawings.

Oreck's version of the fable has siblings Ivan and Alyona being ordered to escape into the forest by their father when he is arrested by soldiers. However, the children get lost in the woods and are relieved to come across a wooden hut that rather strangely stands on a giant pair of chicken legs. They clamber inside and fall asleep by the fire. But they are soon woken by Baba Yaga, a menacing crone who threatens to eat the interlopers unless they complete some fiendish tasks.

They are first charged with heating Baba Yaga's bathhouse. But Alyona begins to cry when she realises there isn't any wood and it is only when a kind mouse offers a suggestion that they go into the forest to collect a large bundle of sticks. Angry at foiled, Baba Yaga orders Ivan and Alyona to make her dinner. But, when they go to the larder, they find there is no flour and Alyona is about to weep again when a cat advises them to find some mushrooms in the forest while he will catch them a juicy bird.

Once again, Baba Yaga is furious that her challenge has been met. So, she dispatches the pair to find the thief who stole her firewood and flour. This time, Ivan feels as tearful as Alyona, as they have no idea how to track down a criminal. But a friendly sparrow guides them into the forest, where they find a weary ghost sitting against a tree. He admits taking the wood and grain and asks Ivan and Alyona to bury him so that he can pass to the other side.

Returning to the house, the children describe what happened and Baba Yaga rewards them with their freedom and a golden comb, which she explains will help them if they throw it to the ground when faced with the direst peril. Venturing into the woods, the siblings soon run into some soldiers, who start to chase them through the trees. Fearing capture, Ivan tosses the comb to the floor and a dense forest grows up that entraps the troops, leaving Ivan and Alyona to reunite with their mother and live happily ever after in her new home

Elements of the Slavic saga recur throughout the live-action segments, which open with a caption proclaiming: `Eastern Europe: Sometime After the Twentieth Century.' A montage follows comprised of medium shots of buildings in various states of repair and close-ups of faces young and old. However, the focus shifts away from the urban to the rural, as Wolf muses on the unknowability of the forest and the durability of custom over pastoral images of tree felling, grass scything, sheep herding and hay forking.

Leaving behind the tranquility of the countryside after a tracking shot of some higgledy-piggledy houses, Oreck and Williams highlight the uniformity of Communist architecture by lingering on the façade of a large block of flats. In the brave new world, however, one woman has been able to paint her balcony purple, while a neighbour is spotted on a treadmill through their billowing curtains.

Away from these scenes of domesticity and leisure, citizens go about their everyday business. A congregation of mostly elderly women prays inside an Orthodox church adorned with icons and votive candles, while a bride and groom encourage their guests to join them in a joyous dance. This sense of continuity leads us back to the woods, where two young children search for mushrooms with their grandparents. The sense of wonder is absent, however, from the factory where the workers peel and slice mushrooms amidst noisily steaming machinery.

But bustle and silence are part of the quotidian experience and shots of feet trudging along pavements are intercut with scenes of women embroidering and a man cutting a chunk of meat. The notion that life goes on is reaffirmed by a sequence contrasting some labourers laying a gravestone in a cemetery with cranes creaking above an inner-city building site. But the impermanence of existence is brought home by views of dilapidated. bomb-damaged red brick buildings, where all traces of their previous occupants have already disappeared and been forgotten.

Moving on, Oreck trawls along a long traffic jam (that immediately recalls the one in Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, 1967) before taking flight with some swooping gulls. A scurrying Steadicam shot, however, ushers us through the woods to a bunker that is explored with jagged movements by torchlight before the camera emerges in time to see the sun dipping down below the trees. If this passage was supposed to conjure up impressions of warfare, the mournful images of the Ferris wheel in the abandoned town of Pripyat in northern Ukraine brings to mind the sobering aftermath of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

An old man wanders into a graveyard that has become part of the forest. He studies a booklet on mushrooms before picking the non-poisonous ones. However, a wind blows in from the previous vignette to warn about the pollution carried across the continent that makes Wolf's reminiscence about gathering mushrooms with his grandmother seem all the more poignant when he reveals that he always felt the hand of Baba Yaga on his shoulder. A young boy smiles nervously at the camera, as his granny cooks him the mushrooms they have just plucked from the woods. But, when she laughs at him for burning his tongue, he hides under the table.

Closing with a medium shot of four youngsters looking apprehensively at the camera, this is a meticulously made and highly distinctive disquisition that leaves a disconcerting impression about humanity's age-old fear of untameable Nature and our futile efforts to resist and conquer it. Some of the quotations feel like they belong on an Athena poster, but Oreck keeps viewers distracted with deftly composed images that consistently takes them off at tangents, as they seem to see familiar things like shops, streetlights and motor vehicles for the first time.

Some may find the electronic score by Paul Grimstad and Takashi Hattori a little intrusive, while others may favourably compare it to the music Philip Glass produced for Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy (1982-2002). Similarly, a few will feel overwhelmed by the surfeit of philosophical and cultural references, while others will be frustrated by the amorphous structure. But this is a bold and inventive way to consider the passing of tradition and how tactile and sensory memory will be handed down to future generations when the world and its values and preoccupations are changing so rapidly and decisively.

Finally, this week, the ArteKino Festival will be live online between 30 September and 9 October. Open to viewers in 44 European countries, the 10 features will be available free of charge to the first 50,000 applicants for the tickets on offer at www.artekinofestival.com. Each lucky bidder will also be entitled to vote for the Nespresso Audience Award, which carries a €50,000 bursary.

Sadly, the tickets for Albert Serra's The Death of Louis XIV, Philippe Faucon's Fatima and Ulrich Seidl's Safari have already been distributed. But those quick enough to log on should still be able to apply for the following:- Pietro Marcello's Lost and Beautiful (opening as a documentary about Tommasso Cestrone's devotion to the Bourbon castle at Carditello, this distinctive hybrid puts a neo-realist spin on the commedia dell'arte tradition by having Pulcinella [Sergio Vitolo] appear from the depths of Mount Vesuvius take care of the late farmers buffalo calf, Sarchiapone); Alessandro Comodin's Happy Times Will Come Soon (years after fugitive Erikas Sizonovas takes refuge in a northern Italian forest with Luca Bernardi, he returns to protect Sabrina Seveycou from the humanoid wolf reputed to be loose in the region); Nicolette Krebitz's Wild (twentysomething German office worker Lilith Stangenberg's humdrum life is transformed by a chance encounter with a wolf whose piercing eyes awaken her suppressed desires); João Nicolau's John From (teenager Julia Palha seems set to spend a lazy summer on her Lisbon balcony with best friend Clara Riedenstein until she sees an exhibition of photographs by her new neighbour, Filipe Vargas); Mirjana Karanovic's A Good Wife (everything seems perfect for Belgrade housewife and chorister Mirjana Karanovic until she finds a videotape that implicates husband Boris Isakovic as a war criminal); Sébastien Laudenbach's The Girl Without Hands (an animated Grimm fairytale about a young girl [Anaïs Demoustier], who is sold to the devil [Philippe Laudenbach] by her miller father [Olivier Broche], only to escape without her hands and have encounters with a river goddess [Elina Löwensöhn], a kindly gardener [Sacha Bourdo] and a handsome prince [Jéremie Elkaïm]); and Argyris Papadimitropoulos's Suntan (a cautionary tale about middle-aged doctor, Makis Papadimitriou, who lands on the Greek island of Antiparos and promptly makes a fool of himself with 21 year-old blonde free spirit, Elli Tringou, and her trio of hedonistic friends).