My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)

A wholly idiosyncratic piece from a director who can only be described as leftfield, My Winnipeg is in equal parts a documentary of the history of Maddin's home town, a dramatised account of his childhood, a prose poem musing on his love-hate relationship with the city, and an expressionist fantasy revolving around the quirkier elements of the city's denizens.
It's largely shot in a Soviet heroic style, but this is also punctuated by shadow puppet animation, newsreel footage and collages of arresting surrealist images. This could all be unbearably pretentious, but Maddin's voice-over narrative makes it gel into something more emotive than a mere documentary, and more grounded than most auteurial musings of this ilk.

7/10