Balekempa

Not a word is said about the absent mother. Nor about the summer that glides past and will probably be the last that physics teacher Todor and his children Mila and Niki will spend together. A minor family drama told with a light-hearted tone, floating on almost matter-of-fact melancholy.

A mysterious stranger fascinates the clients of a South-American holiday resort. He starts performing miracles on the spot. Who is he? A weird, funny, Zen-like satire on mass tourism, as if simultaneously directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Monty Python (circa The Meaning of Life).

Comprised of a series of dream-like episodes beginning with a woman waking up with an insect stuck to her head, Tiger Award winner Ikeda Akira (Anatomy of a Paper Clip) balances otherworldly strangeness with Japanese social pressures in this offbeat comedy that amuses and bewilders in equal measure.