The Owners (Kazakhstan)

For the second year in a row, one of the standout movies at the fest is from Kazakhstan, of all places! And it’s just as much of a slice of Kafkaesque surrealism as last year’s Harmony Lessons, though it’s by a different director—Adilkhan Yerzhanov.

Two brothers and their sick sister move to their father’s beat-up country cottage after their mother’s death, only to find the aging village bully is squatting there, backed up by his gang of goons and the corrupt local cops. Their fight to keep it takes dark and twisted, near-Lynchian turns. Every frame is a work of art, from the police station where the policemen are dressed in conical party hats to the wheelless car sitting high on a rural plateau. And we haven’t even mentioned the sister’s hallucinations and the sinister man who lurks in a cellar.

The bizarre tale builds to a bleak crescendo, and a larger metaphor for the cruel absurdities that keep the former Soviet country circling in poverty. Bitingly funny, warped, and there’s even a reference to Scarface.

Vancity, September 25 (2:30 p.m.) and 28 (9 p.m.); Cinematheque, September 30 (12:45 p.m.)