Shot over three years, the film treads a line between documentary and fiction... and it combines extreme naturalism with surprisingly avant-garde techniques.
That set-up sounds a bit overweight and it's true Arévalo might have been well-advised to trim it a little, but it's surprising how well he manouevres between the storylines drawing parallels and finding a wealth of tension and humour in each.
Ensemble comedy drama, in which a slimming class self-help group find that weight is the least of their problems.
After it premiered at Sundance it was branded in fundamentalist quarters as "anti-Iranian" - what is certainly not in doubt is that it is "anti-viewer".
The music is an intensely emotional force within the film, and effectively acts as an interpretive guide for the audience in relation to the images of poetic abstraction.
A cross between Snow White and Cinderella set in a tropical jungle.
This is diverting to a point but what you see is largely what you get - there's no real attempt from Marczak to dig deeper into the motivations of the people or the organisation.
A look at an organisation whose members have sex in a bid to save the planet.
Geeson is impressive in a role which requires her to show weakness and mental fragility yet still keep viewers identifying with her.
A young woman recovering from a nervous breakdown moves with her husband to a boys' school and finds herself being terrorised by a mysterious one-armed man, but nobody believes her.
With its emphasis on female nudity, this may be cinema more for the devoted voyeur than the casual viewer - but at the same time it puts the male gaze in its place.
Japanese female fighter, famous
for wardrobe malfunctions, takes
on a gang of kidnappers.
Where lesser filmmakers aim to make magic with the long light, Härö waits until afterwards, when Hutri can conjure something less distinct and more distinctive from the dusk, from the thickening mist.
A teacher starts a fencing club in Soviet Estonia, but dare he reveal his mysterious past?
