Demetrios Matheou

A nail-biting, evocative and utterly persuasive crime drama that is very much a part of the country’s burgeoning film output.

At its best, it’s signature Serebrennikov: ambitious, eccentrically amusing, visually flamboyant. But the film’s radical potential is ultimately diluted by its freewheeling nature.

Loznitsa creates a fascinating and quietly devastating chronicle of invasion, occupation and slaughter. As ever, the Ukrainian director doesn’t labour his film with voiceover or overt authorial steers. Yet this is close to home, and it’s impossible not to feel that he’s holding his country to account; for while this was a Nazi extermination, it came with a degree of collusion.

Da Silveira sets a tone that nimbly flows between comedy, mystery and discomforting satire (the Pastor generally makes the skin crawl), though her occasional wink towards horror offers fun rather than frights, to the film’s detriment.

Overall, the film’s treatment of a sensitive scenario lacks subtlety, making for a tough and taxing viewing experience.

Dramatically the film can feel a little one-note and overlong. But it stands comparison with Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio as a fascinating portrait of an artist fighting to survive in the cut and thrust of times quite unlike our own.

The journey is definitely worth making, as both people and places lead Kit slowly towards some sort of rapprochement with his identity.

Given the recent debates about British identity and the spike in race hatred and racially motivated crime – all as a result of Brexit – the timing of White Riot couldn’t be more apt.

The debut feature by Belarus-born, US-educated Darya Zhuk may be set in the mid-90s, but with a plot founded on a young Belarussian’s obsessive desire for an American visa, and a sting in the tale that chimes with the #metoo movement, it has a remarkably topical ring to it.

Quietly, profoundly moving.