Import/Export (18)

Wintry in climate and spirit, Ulrich Seidl's story of criss-crossing economic migrants offers a gruelling 135-minute challenge.

At times it feels like a continuation of Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-ever in its catalogue of injustices and humiliations, yet, against the odds, it rewards your endurance. Ukrainian nurse and single mum Olga (Ekateryna Rak) chucks in her job with an internet sex service and leaves behind her family to seek work in Austria. Failed security guard Paul (Paul Hofmann) gets into debt, compelling him to work for his sleazeball stepfather exporting arcade machines from Austria to housing estates in Ukraine.

If Seidl's intention is to show how the dignity of labour isn't dignified anymore, it's a grim success. Olga's cleaning jobs go from brushing the teeth of a stuffed fox to working in a geriatric home (a real one), while Paul's spirits hit rock-bottom as he watches his stepdad abuse a teenage hooker. These parallel slices of life don't link up, or even comment much on one another, but the performances of Rak and Hofmann inject a humanity that is gradually more affecting.