Most of the film’s opening moments and as a whole take place in the brutal landscape of the Norwegian fjords, a setting from which cinematographer Amine Berrada extracts beauty. Roy has come to visit a cabin connected to his past. There must have been some heartache there, as pensiveness is etched on the young man’s face. Soon enough, the story of his past, along with its relation to the cabin, is revealed in a fleshy flashback.

As a boy, Roy once overheard a conversation his mother was having on the phone. She was obviously talking about him when she says the boy “needs a father figure”. That father figure turns out to be his actual father, Tom (Arnaud Swann). He wants to go on a trip and would like for the boy to come along, the fairly obvious theme of the trip being father-son bonding.

Once there, the harsh Nordic landscape splits their attention between that bonding and survival. And it’s not too long before, as some found out during Covid, living in constant proximity to other people, even those you love, can be a challenge. It’s apt that we see Roy’s dad reading from a book titled How to Survive Anything. He also talks a bit about how his union with his son’s mother fell apart. “Marriage doesn’t work out for some people. It is nobody’s fault,” he says.

De Fontenay gets the tone just right in these scenes featuring father and son. And in Arnaud Swann, he has cast an actor who, in peacetime, shows appropriately awkward affection for his estranged son, but as the times become increasingly brutal, seems to crumble face-first. The film’s drama depends heavily on him and he delivers.

And yet, somehow, this drama and its consequences do not seem sufficient for de Fontenay. Towards the end of the story, there’s a shift, and not in the most complimentary of ways. Quite conceivably, Sukkwan Island could do without its mise en abyme structure, becoming solely an account of the bonding process of a son and father. But perhaps in trying to reproduce for viewers what Vann, on the page, does for his readers, the film arrives at an unsatisfactory ending.

“We make the rules here. We do whatever we want,” one of de Fontenay’s characters says at some point. As a director, it is a sentiment that de Fontenay can relate to. His own rules work for much of this film. But one wishes that in dreaming up a conclusion, he had followed a different set of commands.

Director, screenwriter: Vladimir de Fontenay
Cast: Swann Arlaud, Woody Norman, Alma Pöysti, Ruaridh Mollica, Tuppence Middleton
Cinematographer: Amine Berrada
Editor: Nicolas Chaudeurge
Producers: Carole Scotta, Eliott Khayat, Caroline Benjo
Co-Producers: Synnøve Hørsdal, Petter Onstad Løkke, Jacques-Henri Bronckart, Tatjana Kozar, Mike Goodridge, Sydney Oberfeld
Venue: Sundance (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
In English
114 minutes

But that fortitude is borne from decades of forced displacement and violence which has spanned across generations of Palestinian families. The accumulated hard truths of life under occupation are explored in Cherien Dabis’ blunt yet necessary All That’s Left of You. The epic drama is an ambitious and affecting look at one family fractured by tragedy and united by an enduring love for each other and their homeland.

The sprawling narrative — stretching nearly two-and-a-half-hours — moves back and forth across four time periods (1948, 1978, 1988, and 2002) but is rooted in a single, shattering event. In 1988, teenage Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) turns down a street only to find himself in the midst of an impromptu protest against Israeli soldiers. The demonstration turns violent, Noor is shot, and his mother Hanan (Dabis) rolls back the calendar to the 1948 Nakba and unthreads the stories of his grandfather Sharif (Adam Bakri) and father Salim (Saleh Bakri), what they endured, and how the past has shaped the family’s present.

Penned by Dabis, who also co-leads the picture in addition to directing, the filmmaker’s handling of the timelines is assured, and her grip on the messaging clear but never didactic. The film’s surface storytelling evocatively renders the stifling realities of living in an apartheid state, but it’s the psychological suffering that is most vivid. The burden of bureaucracy — whether its obtaining the right paperwork to receive life-saving healthcare or the requirements needed to simply travel to and from Israel — is measured in all its inhumane absurdity. However, just as harrowing as death are the humiliations that test the dignity of Hanan’s family. A sequence in which Noor’s father Salim is forced at gunpoint to defame his wife in front of his son by Israeli soldiers for safe passage to their home that is only steps away is a moment as life-altering as receiving a bullet.

If the film’s visuals from director of photography Christopher Aoun occasionally feel too polished and glossy, the movie remains grounded in Dabis’ unshakeable pursuit of personal reckoning. The filmmaker grapples with a Palestine that is no longer free, its culture stolen, its people continually pushed by force to the edge of their emotional and physical limits. That anger and pain lives like a raw nerve in All That’s Left of You. The film doesn’t require technical audacity when it so vulnerably and meaningfully wrestles with the anguish of a nation and contemplates what form dissent can take in the future.

Surprisingly, after so much despair, Dabis manages to find a sliver of hope and understanding, a way of navigating what’s to come. “Your humanity is also your resistance,” Noor softly tells Salim as they visit Tel Aviv at the story’s close. After enduring having his home stolen, imprisonment, and no shortage of indignities, it’s all he can do not to leave Israel immediately. But it’s here that Noor acknowledges a somewhat bitter irony: that even as Palestinians face one hardship after another, they are expected to respond with grace. That as Salim learns his childhood city has been diminished and its neighborhood turned into shops and tourist stalls he must act with more civility than is afforded him.

As of publication, over 47,300 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023. And in tracing Palestine’s history near to the current moment, we leave All That’s Left Of You with the understanding that the trauma of a nation is far from over.

Director, screenplay: Cherien Dabis
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Cherien Dabis, Adam Bakri, Maria Zreik, Mohammad Bakri, Muhammad Abed Elrahman
Producers: Thanassis Karathanos, Cherien Dabis, Martin Hampel, Karim Amer
Cinematography: Christopher Aoun
Production design: Bashar Hassuneh
Costume design: Zeina Soufan
Editing: Tina Baz
Music: Amine Bouhafa
Sound: Paul Rischer
Production companies: Pallas Film (Germany), Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion (Germany), Displaced Pictures (State of Palestine), Nooraluna Productions
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres)
In Arabic, English
145 minutes

The meet-cute, if one can call it that, happens on a farm. His response is to flee from the girl whose beauty has struck him so. But that, of course, is not the end of the affair. Ahmet and Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova ) will meet again.

As Ahmet, first-time actor Arif Jakup is the film’s protagonist and its main asset. His unlined face radiates a subtle cheer despite the tough love he receives from his father, a man’s whose harshness both mirrors the vigorous patriarchal society he’s raised his kids in and reflects the grief held in his heart for his dead wife.

Jakup’s Ahmet is the key to the movie, along with his relationships — to his father, to his brother, to the girl, to the village — that lend DJ Ahmet its narrative and gives Unkovski (who wrote the script) an opportunity to say a few things about generational differences, traditional norms, and technology. The first two things are responsible for the film’s philosophic undertow; the last is also an instrument for comedy. In a gag that sets up a key plot point towards the end, a serviceable joke is made out of a combination of Microsoft Windows and a minaret.

As the film’s title seems to inform us, music is an important part of the film and the story really begins with Ahmet grooving to music. It is deployed through an interesting sound design that tells the viewer this kid’s relationship with these sounds is a peculiar one. And when, in the second act, Ahmet sees Aya again, two things of high importance to the modern teenager are present in the atmosphere: music and Tiktok.

The first supplies the environment for a wacky situation involving sheep storming a rave; the latter makes Ahmet, as he is later told, “the first celebrity” from the village.

Unkovski’s film is sympathetic to the plight of young people navigating romance and it is also alert to the conservative ideals of the older generation (those ideals are the film’s true villains). Even so, there’s no doubt that his film is firmly on the side of the young. Ahmet is the hero of the tale and it is his coming-of-age we are watching. Aya, by contrast, is worldly, has arrived from Germany, and has only visited the village because she is supposed to marry a man her family has chosen. Tweak the script a bit and their love story is a summer romance destined to end with Aya breaking the shepherd boy’s heart.

So, from a narrative perspective, there isn’t much in DJ Ahmet that is different from the average boy-in-love-with-forbidden-girl story. Unkovski’s brilliance is connected to how well he has taken the troubled young love story and its accoutrements to a non-mainstream locale. It is (almost) Romeo and Juliet in Muslim Macedonia. Maybe except for one detail: Shakespeare never had one of his young lovers lie supine while enjoying a first kiss under a sky coloured by fireworks.

Director, screenwriter: Georgi M. Unkovski
Cast: Arif Jakup, Agush Agushev, Dora Akan Zlatanova, Aksel Mehmet
Producers: Ivan Unkovski, Ivana Shekutkoska
Cinematography: Naum Doksevsksi
Music: Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz
Editing: Michal Reich
Production design: Dejan Gosevski, Aleksandra Chevreska
Production companies: Cinema Futura
International sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Sundance (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
In Turkish and Macedonian
99 minutes

Based on a book by Danish author Mads Ananda Lodahl, who in turn drew on his working experience in Denmark and Germany, the film introduces its protagonist, Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) in the context of just another day at the office, so to speak: he’s on staff at Adonis, the only gay sauna in Copenhagen, and he’s no stranger to the notion of hooking up with muscular guys within the building’s steamy confines.

Then, one day, he meets William (Nina Rask), a trans man waiting to undergo surgery, and the chemistry between them is undeniable. However, William’s biological features make him a pariah in Adonis circles, where the queer identity is still associated with more traditional ideas of masculinity, and Johan has to figure out if their love is strong enough to overcome his desire to be part of that world.

There may or may not have been a certain irony in the naming of the protagonist’s workplace (especially since Adonis is actually the name of a beauty salon in Denmark), but overall the vibe is very serious and sincere, driven by Broe’s stated desire to depict the queer community he’s part of in ways not frequently shown on screen (a mission statement that already informed his award-winning short film Amfi, released in 2018).

Thus, in addition to the brief glimpses of conventional homoerotic activity inside the sauna, we get a detailed and layered look at the emotional bond of two individuals dealing with fluidity and its place within societal norms in different ways. Warm close-ups capture a longing in the lovers’ eyes that goes beyond the purely physical attraction, putting them at odds with a culture that is still very much obsessed with the classic (male) body shape.

Key to the power of the bond between the two main characters is the casting, a major step forward in representation: as has often been the case, the role of William was hard to cast, due to a general lack of trans actors in Denmark. The part was eventually given to actress and comedian Nina Rask, on the basis of her being a strong voice in the queer community and regularly questioning gender norms in her stand-up routines, and she is the first transgender performer to star in a Danish film.

She inhabits the character with vulnerability and confidence from the jump, finding her ideal scene partner in Magnus Juhl Andersen – like her, one of the more interesting up-and-coming Danish talents – and his honest approach to Johan’s self-conscious tightrope walk between two ends of a spectrum he sincerely endeavors to understand as fully as possible, trying to escape a narrower worldview he sometimes ends up trapped in. Their relationship comes across as messy, layered and real, showing the nuances of the world they live in beneath the mists of the sauna steam.

Director: Mathias Broe
Screenwriters: Mathias Broe, William Lippert
Cast: Magnus Juhl Andersen, Nina Rask, Dilan Amin, Klaus Tange
Producer: Mads-August Grarup Hertz
Cinematography: Nicolai Lok
Sound: Mia Terry
Production company: Nordisk Film Production A/S
World sales: TrustNordisk
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
In Danish, Swedish
105 minutes

Note: An earlier version of this review contained factual inaccuracies about the casting, due to a misinterpretation of the film’s press notes. The paragraph about Nina Rask has been amended to accurately reflect her identity.

If Mr. Nobody Against Putin feels a little disjointed and under-explained in places, that is forgivable. The film-making process was tortuous, with Talankin and Borenstein only able to communicate sporadically over an encrypted line, using coded language in case of discovery. Their belated in-person collaboration only happened late in the project, after Talankin fled Russia. Then the pair had to shape a coherent 90-minute narrative from hundreds of hours of footage, excising anything that could imperil any of the real people appearing on screen. Despite these limitations, this is a brave and timely film, a rare and empathetic ensemble portrait of ordinary Russians living with the daily mental and physical pressures of dictatorship. World premiering at Sundance film festival this week, this European co-production should find a healthy global audience, boosted by backing from Britain’s BBC and Danish state broadcaster DR.

An engagingly geeky and energetic presence on camera, Talankin clearly loves his job as a teacher, events organiser and official videographer at the biggest high school in Karabash, a remote industrial town nestled in the Urals around 1100 miles east of Moscow. Although Karabash is infamous for its toxic climate and short life expectancy, Talankin expresses only deep fondness for his shabby home town and its citizens. Crucially, he enjoys a particularly close bond with his teenage students, who treat him more as friend and confidante than authority figure. There are unavoidable echoes here of Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society (1989).

Already a compulsive video diarist, Talankin is well-placed to document the official wave of pro-military propaganda that sweeps Russia following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These Kremlin-imposed changes heavily impact the school routine, where a new “patriotic education” curriculum forces glum-faced students to take part in daily flag-waving ceremonies, study revised pro-Russian history books, join paramilitary youth clubs and even attend lectures by Wagner Group mercenaries. If these methods sound familiar, most are throwbacks to the darkest days of the Soviet Union. Children are once again being brainwashed to blindly obey a ruling party elite. In the case of adolescent boys, they are also being groomed for imminent military conscription.

Talankin initially has no choice but to comply with these harsh new rules, dutifully filming patriotic classroom rituals and pro-war street demonstrations. But inside he is deeply conflicted, and cannot hide his anger forever: “I feel like I’m an alien in my own town,” he complains. “Love for your country is not about putting up a flag.”

He begins staging impulsive personal protests, like blasting Lady Gaga’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner” over the school speaker system instead of the obligatory Russian national anthem, or transforming pro-war Z symbols taped across classroom windows into anti-war X symbols. As Putin announces a censorship crackdown and harsher jail sentences for dissident voices, even these tiny acts of resistance come with a huge potential risk. Soon, understandably, even sympathetic students begin warily distancing themselves from their favourite teacher.

After concluding that “even a guy like me should have some principles”, Talankin finally offers the school his resignation, but he changes his mind when a more subtle and potentially far-reaching form of protest becomes possible. A random connection with a Russian media company leads him indirectly to Borenstein, who proposes a documentary collaboration. Talankin then continues his regular video work, but this time he is gathering evidence of Putin’s pro-war indoctrination to smuggle out of the country. No longer just a small-town educator, he becomes more like an undercover whistle-blower.

Most of the secondary characters in Mr. Nobody Against Putin are depicted with compassion and nuance, more victims than villains in Putin’s propaganda machine. But a clear monster emerges in the shape of Talankin’s colleague, history teacher Pavel Abulmanov. Straight out of central casting as a ghoulish Kremlin groupie, Abulmanov seizes on the school’s strict new curriculum with sinister relish, lecturing students with comically lurid fabrications about Ukraine’s “Nazi” regime and western Europe’s imminent economic collapse. In one especially creepy clip, he lists his personal heroes from the Soviet era, including Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, widely reviled as a sadistic mass murderer and serial rapist. It comes as no surprise when Abulmanov’s fawning loyalty to the regime is later rewarded at a brazenly rigged prize-giving ceremony.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin is mostly shot in fairly conventional hand-held reportage style, augmented by a few playful cutaways and captions, plus a lyrical finale which packs extra emotional weight as Talankin’s veiled farewell to his beloved home town. The film’s mood is initially freewheeling and genial, but inevitably darkens as the grinding war in Ukraine comes to dominate Russian domestic discourse. Between soul-searching confessions to camera, Talankin sees several of his former students drafted to fight in Ukraine, some of whom never return. His own mother offers only fatalism, arguing that Russians have always craved war: “people love to shoot each other,” she shrugs cheerfully.

The story is book-ended with Talankin’s escape to an unnamed foreign country in summer 2024, sketched out in carefully spare detail here, which has the nerve-jangling urgency of a spy thriller. Inevitably, with the war ongoing and Putin still in power, this open-ended conclusion lacks a satisfying sense of closure. Even so, Talankin and Borenstein have created a gripping and valuable document of how a 21st century dictatorship operates, the banality of evil captured in real-time detail, with cynical old men poisoning innocent young minds.

Directors: David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin
Screenwriter: David Borenstein
Cinematographer: Pavel Talankin
Editors: Nicolaj Monberg, Rebekka Lønqvist
Composer: Michal Rataj
Production companies: Made in Copenhagen (Denmark), Pink Productions (Czechia)
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Documentary Competition)
In Russian
90 minutes

It’s an odious promise she’s upheld, as last autumn, her government expanded their ban on domestic surrogacy to include citizens traveling abroad for the procedure. And with President Donald Trump invoking an executive order recognizing only two genders, and Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister hopeful Pierre Poilievre parroting the same sentiment, the rights and protections of LGBTQ+ people have never been more imperiled. Thus, it’s with a welcome shimmer of empathy during these dark days, that Gianluca Matarrese’s documentary GEN_ debuts at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a reminder that away from political theatre, there is a humane and sensitive medical community caring for people whose lives are more complex and difficult than news cycle chyrons suggest.

The offices of the Diagnosis and Therapy of Sterility and Cryopreservation department at Niguarda Hospital in Milan, Italy do their best to focus on the patient in front of them, and not the discourse around their care. Headed by the renowned Dr. Maurizio Bini, the focus of Matarrese’s film, he’s a generous, thoughtful, and pragmatic physician who believes his duty situates him “between what is right and what is legal.” In practice, as evidenced across the observational GEN_, it means advocating for the best outcomes for his patients both emotionally and physically. Set in the run-up to his retirement, the picture drops viewers into his consultation room as he advises people on their journey through transitioning, and those planning to start a family.

The mosaic of individuals we meet throughout GEN_ — from women looking for a last chance to conceive, to convicts hoping to transition — is the film’s greatest strength, highlighting that there is no typical patient profile. Among the most insightful visits is from an adolescent who is gingerly investigating transitioning. The eye-opening conversation sees the doctor gently probing their reasoning, background, and history, emphasizing a sensitive approach before further steps are taken. “Our aim is to bring you back into harmony with your body,” he says to the teen and their parents, underscoring that there is a wide and beautiful space between hormone therapy and surgery for someone to find their true selves.

The film’s delicate and nuanced look at the sensitive care provided by Dr. Bini and his staff is often interrupted by the score from Cantoutoma. The group’s jazzy interludes — distractingly FM-lite, and occasionally discordant — aims to bring levity in the spaces between difficult discussions. However, it could be argued that relying on Dr. Bini’s considerate yet candid bedside manner is all the dramatic weight the picture needs. Equally superfluous are the sidebars to hospital construction and Dr. Bini’s mushroom foraging hobby which operate as clunky metaphors for the sophistication of human biology.

Fortunately, the engaging Dr. Bini smooths over those modest rough patches. As the doctor occupies almost every minute, the picture effortlessly showcases the standard of attentive, compassionate, and professional care that he has set at the institution. Many of the stories will be hard to shake when the lights come up, but it might be Bogdan that audiences will be thinking of most. The young waiter — abandoned as a toddler by his biological mother — fears being forsaken again if his adoptive parents don’t reconcile with his decision to transition. Gently, Dr. Bini encourages Bogdan to involve his parents, and even calls his mother to persuade her to come to the next appointment. And to see Bogdan, who has suffered so much, laugh and break into an endearing and infectious smile at finally receiving the care they’ve long deserved, it’s the strongest argument of them all that trans rights are human rights.

Director: Gianluca Matarrese
Screenplay: Gianluca Matarrese, Donatella Palermo, Alexandre Iordachescu
Producers: Dominique Barneaud, Donatella Palermo, Alexandre Iordachescu
Cinematography: Gianluca Matarrese
Editing: Giorgia Villa
Music: Cantautoma
Sound: Gianluca Matarrese
Production companies: Bellota Films (France), Stemal Entertainment (Italy), Elefant Films (Switzerland)
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Documentary Competition)
In Italian
104 minutes

The story takes place in the kingdom of Swedlandia (Sweden), where the widowed Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) finds brief solace in her second marriage (the poor fella dies before the opening credits). Her daughter Elvira (Lea Myren) is an outsider in more ways than one: notably, Elvira’s family are the only Norwegian speakers in an otherwise Swedish environment. She finds herself rapidly competing with stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), and her desire to fit in grows increasingly desperate when a handsome prince (Isac Calmroth) enters the picture.

First-time director Emilie Blichfeldt drew inspiration from the Brothers Grimm version of the fairy tale, rather than the more frequently adapted Charles Perrault interpretation, as well as her own struggles with body image: the horror is largely societal, as Elvira is subjected to the torture of needing to conform to impossible beauty standards and some scenes play out like a particularly perverse Pygmalion by way of Ken Russell.

Owing to the personal connection between director and material, the film sets out to offer a more rounded portrait of the (step)sibling rivalry: Elvira is not fully evil, albeit clearly misguided in her attempts to become beautiful at all costs; Agnes is not wholly innocent (Rebekka openly calls her “slut” after a late night incident), but still far from the adversarial figure in her stepsister’s mind. And it is here the film truly finds its identity, cheekily filling in the gaps in between the more famous scenes (the dress, carriage and ball are all accounted for; the fairy godmother becomes the subject of a winking gag).

Lensed with a somewhat otherworldly eye by cinematographer Marcel Zyskind, the film comes across as empathetic, but rarely sympathetic, save for scenes where the abusive mother lives up to her status as an iconic pop culture villain, with Ane Dahl Torp adding malice and menace to the sing-song tones of the Norwegian language. And while it’s hard not to feel sorry for Elvira in the context of a world that constantly looks down on her, there’s no denying it’s also fun to watch her schemes unravel when the more familiar plot beats kick in.

In fact, while the social angle makes the horror palpable enough, it’s worth noting that Blichfeldt doesn’t shy away from the more literal manifestations of genre elements, climaxing in a third act that manages to be even grimmer than Grimm and delivers properly batshit crazy moments of bodily transformation gone spectacularly wrong. The shoe may not fit Elvira’s foot, but she still walks away with the entire movie and marks Myren as one to watch on the Nordic scene going forward.

Director & Screenwriter: Emilie Blichfeldt
Cast: Lea Myren, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Naess, Flo Fagerli, Isac Calmroth, Malte Gårdinger
Producers: Maria Ekerhovd, Theis Nørgaard, Lizette Jonjic, Mariusz Wlodarski, Ada Solomon
Cinematography: Marcel Zyskind
Production Design: Sabine Hviid
Costume Design: Manon Rasmussen
Sound: Tormod Ringnes
Production companies: Mer Film, Lava Films, Motor, Zentropa
World sales: Memento International
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Midnight)
In Norwegian, Swedish
109 minutes

Viewers should not be put off by its unadventurous, low-key opening, as some major surprises are in store in the second half. But despite these welcome twists, this is a far cry from the originality of the director’s Iranian work. Still, as social commentary, The Things You Kill dives deeper and cuts sharper, asserting that there is a violent, even murderous patriarchy lurking inside the most modern-looking of young men, which haunts the mind and emerges in supernatural form.

There’s a lot to explain about the conflicted hero Ali (played by a mood-switching Ekin Koc, the star of Burning Days), an American-trained college lecturer with multiple family problems. In an early scene that takes place in what is always referred to as “Dad’s house”, he dotes on his chronically ill mother and is at permanent odds with his angry, rough-spoken father, who scornfully treats both wife and son like he owns them. Back in Ali’s own modern, tastefully appointed apartment, a shadowy bedroom scene leads to the discovery that he can’t get his wife Hazar (Hazar Erguclu) pregnant, a difficulty that is scientifically confirmed by his doctor as low sperm count. Instead of talking it over with Hazar, he decides to keep this upsetting, potentially emasculating information to himself and brood.

Production designer Meral Aktan’s third major set is “the garden” where Ali plants trees in a bone-dry valley as a hobby, and where his wooden cabin and doghouse disfigure a dazzling mountain range. Originally the garden functions as a retreat into nature for the overburdened Lit teacher, but as the story goes on, it becomes the site of an alarming transformation. Skirting the edges of psychological horror, a doppelganger theme emerges out of nowhere that shakes up a standard revenge-themed narrative with crime-and-self-punishment overtones. But after a night on the mountain digging graves, Ali’s life turns into a very different story.

It all begins when one of his three sisters, who remained close to his parents while he spent 14 years abroad, reveals she once saw Dad punch their mother on the head so hard she lost consciousness. When the ailing woman actually dies under suspicious circumstances, Ali suspects his father may have murdered her to get her out of the way for a new love. The only person to whom he confides his torments is a wandering laborer named Reza (Erkan Kolcak Kostendil), who looks a bit like Ali, and who gets a job as a gardener and handyman around the garden.

There’s a lot on the fire here, and some ideas seem tossed out without landing anywhere. One of these is the interest a girl student shows in Ali, a dawning, unhealthy relationship that goes nowhere. Another is a deeply personal confession he makes to a brusque department head at the university about how, as a young boy, he fearfully fought off the unwanted advances of an older boy; this bit of buried backstory is left pitifully dangling.

But in a finale invaded with ghosts and dreams, co-editors Khatami and Selda Taskin do a nice job tying up many of the plot threads with a touch of poetry, one that is moodily echoed in the darkening photography of DP Bartosz Swiniarski. All told, it’s a film that improves as it goes along, taking enough narrative risks to be intriguing and backed by a solid cast all around.

Director, screenwriter: Alireza Khatami
Producers: Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, Cyriac Auriol, Mariusz Wlodarski, Alireza Khatami, Michael Soloman
Cast:  Ekin Koc, Erkan Kolcak Kostendil, Hazar Erguclu, Ercan Kesal, Guliz Sirinyan, Aysan Sumercan Olmez, Serhat Nalbantoglu, Selen Kurtaran
Cinematography: Bartosz Swiniarski PSC
Production design: Meral Aktan
Editing: Alireza Khatami, Selda Taskin
Sound recorder: Benjamin Laurent
Sound design: Ange Hubert
Production companies: Fulgurance & Remora Films in coproduction with Lava Films, Tell Tall Tale, Band with Pictures, Sinektif in association with Desmar, Best Friend Forever, Le Pacte, Poyraz Film
World sales: Best Friend Forever
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Dramatic Competition )
In Turkish
114  minutes