Tricks

Aroview: In this dappled portrait of working-class rural Poland, a precocious six-year-old boy uses his older sister's semi-magical mastery of 'tricks' to tease his long-lost father away from the arms of fate and back into the loop of family.

Writer/director Jakimowski once again turns to the rich possibilities of a child's point of view to craft a film whose prosaic surface of small-town vignettes is animated by magic and curiosity. The protagonist's sandpit is a gorgeously shot disheveled corner of New Europe, and the relationships between the three young leads are warm and genuine. A superbly subtle example of magical realist film-making.