Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Imagine, if you will, a remake of John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. But instead of the Antarctic, we're in rural Finland. And instead of Kurt Russell, there's a nine-year-old kid. And instead of a marauding, shape-changing space beast, there's, well, Santa Claus. For his debut film, writer-director Jalmari Helander has gone back to the old Finnish folk tales which depicted the spirit of Christmas as a lurking, predatory demon intent on stealing children from their beds - and now he's back, and hungry for blood... At 77 minutes, 'Rare Exports' is distinctly slight, but it contains enough mad ideas, visual invention and naked geriatrics (yup) to mark it out as one of the festival's oddest, most welcome discoveries.