Flatpack

Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos

Greece 2009, 94 minutes

With: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia

Winner of the ‘Un Certain Regard’ prize at last year’s Cannes Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Greek oddity is unlike anything you are likely to see at your local cinema this year. Disturbing, provocative and grimly funny, Dogtooth centres on a radically overprotective couple who have completely shut off their children from the outside world. Although they are fully grown-up, the ‘children’ never leave the house, spending their time playing strange games or learning erroneous vocabulary definitions fabricated by their mother (zombies are small yellow flowers, for instance). This creepily idyllic childhood state is perturbed when an outsider is brought in to service the son’s sexual needs, starting a chain of events that will have tragi-comedic consequences. Brilliantly inventive and surreally perverse, it is a remarkably assured, bold, original directorial debut.

The second of two late-night specials presented by Electric Sheep magazine. See also: Alucarda.