('BIFF' Bermuda International Film Festival - FEATURE)
The runaway winner at last year's Slovenian Film Awards, Igor Sterk's psychological thriller wraps up its themes in a slick and beautifully filmed package which is as seductive as it is disturbing. Hard-bitten but damaged police detective Dusan (Igor Samobor) becomes more and more involved in a suicide case, to the point where he begins to live in the dead man's apartment. As he does so, ghosts from his past start to emerge. Looking back on the film, you realise there was probably a moment when you could have said ‘Hang on a minute...' But the skill with which Sterk reels you in is such that you're in for a ride, from the first haunting image of a car stopped on a motorway bridge high above a wooded valley. If you don't know how good the work currently being done is by filmmakers in the former Yugoslavia, there could be no better place to start. And if you've hardly heard of Slovenia, the country's beauty and strangeness will be with you long after you leave the theatre.
