Mila from Mars

Mila (whose name we don’t hear until the end) is a kohl-eyed 16 year-old, taken to wearing a micro, pleather skirt in all weathers. We meet her making her escape from a brutal drugs baron and secreting herself in a remote border village populated solely by octogenarians, who make their living growing, selling and smoking their own ‘grass’. The elders make and decorate the pregnant girl a house for her baby; meanwhile ‘the teacher’ up the hill attracts her sexual attention – ‘I want you to split me right open, so I can fly free!’ she demands of him coquettishly. Kooky, pretentious and often disjointed, Sophia’s award-winning film plays like a mix of Snow White, Christian fable, Last of the Summer Wine and a youth-orientated social and political critique. Bizarre and bizarrely watchable.