Vodka Lemon

Saleem, a Paris-based Kurd, displays the visual confidence and subtle screwball rhythms of a master, exploiting offscreen space, deadpan compositions, and deft visual backbeats, as well as attaining a breathtaking fidelity to real light and landscape.

The thicket of relationships that the director, Hiner Saleem, has created and weaves his cast and camera through is so invitingly hotblooded and crowded with hilariously melodramatic incident that the snowbanks are not nearly as forbidding as they initially seem.

Director Hiner Saleem has created a magical movie that veers, even within scenes, from love story to tragedy to comic relief.

An appealingly wry little film that is as appetizing as its title.

The situation in these former republics may indeed be dire, but it's a breeding ground for exciting cinema.

Exceedingly dry and precise and slow-paced comedy.

The film's leisurely pacing is often too slow for its own good, and many scenes meander endlessly with no true payoff.