Womb (2010, MA15+)

Dir: Benedek Fliegauf, Germany / Hungary / France, 111mins, digital

It’s hard to see it as love-at-first-sight, when a strong-willed 10 year-old girl meets local boy Thomas on her summer holidays. But it’s a childish fixation turned romantic obsession Rebecca will carry all through her life. She returns years later when he is accidentally killed just a few days after their reunion, then out of grief, she steals a sample of his DNA. In the years following, she raises his clone as her own child. Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf’s (Dealer) first English-language feature is fashionably cast, with Eva Green and Dr Who de jour Matt Smith. Yet it’s a more creepy and dangerous film than their presence might suggest. Like Another Earth , it’s part of a new cycle reviving the stark, dystopian sci-fi cinema of ideas, dreams, near-futures of the early 1970s.

Canberra theatrical premiere.