Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Kay is a car thief whose father is involved in bigger scams that, to her despair, almost always go wrong. She catches the eye of a boxer-turned-debt collector, who recognizes in her a good woman who’s been forced into criminality against her will, and so saves her from an encounter with the cops.

The ethnic hatred behind the 1990s Balkan bloodshed spark to life in startling fashion in this artistically ambitious psychological thriller. When two Bosnian immigrants, a Muslim and a Serb, meet by chance in America on a deserted North Dakota highway, the stage is set for some insidious mind games.

Set in the early 1980s, during a rural Swedish summer, this beautifully crafted feature excels at depicting the private realms kids stealthily create when free of adult supervision as its unnamed heroine finds a way to get rid of her feckless aunt and take care of herself while her parents are away.

Something is seriously wrong with the kids, who start killing off the adults during an otherwise normal family outing. Clever, claustrophobic direction transforms what should have been an innocuous plan to spend the holidays at a remote country house into an alarming and thoroughly original chiller.

Best known for video and installation work, Heerkens makes his feature directing debut by mounting 25 miniature cameras on a Jaguar XJS and shooting one of Europe’s finest actresses, Johanna ter Steege, in a one-sided, one-take phone conversation with the married lover who’s just jilted her.

Cleverly riffing on, this charming drama for all ages looks at serious family matters from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl, who becomes obsessed with whether her mother is really her mother, little suspecting the altogether different secret surrounding her parentage.