Fish & Cat

Two cooks in a small restaurant at the ends of the Earth, where not even the most famished of diners would order anything. A sack of rotten meat and a sense of paranoia that someone will turn up who hasn't passed through the "gate." A group of camping students on the other side of the woods, preparing for their kite-flying competition – there's a sense of unease around them as well. Nothing's as it should be, things aren't in their proper places, and some visitors might well be long dead. There's something sinister in the air, something which suggests that the effect doesn't necessarily always follow the cause. The past organically merges with the future, the expressions "here" and "now" make no sense, and the characters roam around, drifting from nowhere to nowhere, as if in their own nightmare. Fish & Cat is a beguiling brew of horror flick, black comedy and meditation on the essence of time. Within a single shot lasting over two hours, director Shahram Mokri unfurled a remarkably complex choreography, whose sophistication allows us to observe the protagonists' fates from various angles and time frames. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)