Artist Dogtooth

Although Dogtooth is due for a limited release later in 2010, the annual European Union Film Festival is the perfect chance to catch up with Yorgos Lanthimos' stunning film, one of last year's great festival discoveries. Lanthimos' brilliant isolationist parable follows three grown children who live in a country estate in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by a large fence. Their knowledge of the world is dictated entirely by their parents, who feed them false information and find various ways to instill anxiety about the terrors that lurk outside their property. Some lies are small and hilariously improvisational, like a made-up language that defines “zombies” as little yellow flowers, and others are more insidious, like a made-up fourth sibling who was kicked out of the house for disobedience. When the truth starts to slip through, darkly funny (and just plain dark) chaos ensues.

Updated 03/11/2010