I, Olga Hepnarová

Atmospheric and engrossing, this meticulous recreation of time and place acquires an unsettling contemporary relevance through its analysis of the mindset of a mass murderer with a death wish.

A top performance for this year so far, Olszanksa's Olga is standoffish, frequently smoldering, rarely smiling, and she toes the line between intelligence and insanity.

Anchored by a startling performance by Michalina Olszanska, the Czech film “I, Olga Hepnarova” is an austere, hypnotic story of sadness, madness and murder.

The filmmakers take few measures to engender sympathy for Olga, but their prismatic take on her life, while novel, precludes making any resonant statements about homosexuality, emotional health, or humankind’s capacity for evil.

Unforgivingly rigorous to its final, exactingly composed monochrome frame, I, Olga Hepnarova shows us scarcely a flickering moment of light or joy in its anti-heroine’s short, loveless life, depicted on screen from adolescence upwards.

Olszanska gives an impressively intense performance, if a little too mannered at first, but neither she nor the filmmakers ever get beneath the character's skin.

Even if you go into this film knowing absolutely nothing about the true story on which it’s based...you’ll sense something dreadful is going to happen because so much of it is crushingly dull.