Lucile Hadžihalilović’s latest enigma – a beguiling body-horror nightmare – will wriggle its way into your mind.

Somewhere in 20th-century Europe live Mia, a girl without teeth, and her solemn carer Albert, nicknamed Earwig. Each day, he fits her with ice dentures made from her own saliva, which is collected in a bizarre headgear apparatus. But then a mysterious phone call tells Albert to ready Mia for a journey. What’s their destination? Who is the fair-haired woman who watches Mia? And who is the man who goads Albert into a shocking act of violence?

Adapted by its director, alongside co-writer Geoff Cox (High Life), from a cult novel by Brian Catling, Earwig is the first English-language feature from Hadžihalilović (Evolution, MIFF 2016; Innocence, MIFF 2005) – cinema’s master of the unsettling, who receives a special retrospective at this year’s MIFF. It’s tempting to compare the film to David Lynch or Peter Strickland, or to describe it as ‘Kafkaesque’, but this feat of muted colour and stunning chiaroscuro, of atmosphere and ambiguous menace, is a surrealist vision that refuses conventional resolution. Otherworldly, uncanny, almost a living painting – you’ll need plenty of ice in your post-screening drink as you ponder this strange tale of connection and loss.

“It’s rare you watch a truly unique work, but Earwig is one such film … A singular piece from a defiant director.” – Screen Daily