House of Fools

Aroview: Based around the true story of a Chechen mental hospital which was abandoned by staff during the recent civil war, with patients left to fend for themselves.

As chaos develops, this becomes centred on the world of a young woman who fantasises about the Canadian pop-singer Bryan Adams (making several appearances), and draws other, more deluded patients under her wing. Thematically, this seeks to make the asylum an allegory for the wider world, and despite flashes of inspired dreaminess and lunacy, risks much in its depiction of the mentally ill as saintly and goofily endearing.