Saul Fia (László Nemes, 2015)

Son of Saul dumps the viewer straight into Auschwitz, 1944, without exposition because by now we ought to know. And that's fair enough.
It's almost all steadicam work following the lead's face, so patience is required as he, effectively a traitor to his Jewish kin, keeps on collaborating in the work of the gas chambers until reaching a moral breaking point. But it's worth the wait. This isn't some sugary Hollywood rewrite and feels like a documentary more than a work of fiction: less Schindler's List than Lanzmann's Shoah. This to the extent that it was praised by Lanzmann. It's every bit as brutal and undecorous as it needs to be to get the message across.

8/10