A Man Thing

This superb and moving drama from the Lodz Film School, a multi-award winner internationally, declares inspiration from Kes (following on from Kieslowski), but heralds an absolutely distinctive and confident new talent with a compelling tale of a boy, isolated and abused at home and school, who finds solace with a stray dog facing its end at the local pound. Subtle, complex, extraordinarily economic and telling in its narrative revelations, this is deeply humane movie-making, and short film (cinema, dammit) at its very best.