Nabat

Azerbaijan's Oscar submission, is an exquisitely shot minimalist tale of an elderly woman who finds herself the last remaining resident in a village evacuated during the Nagorno-Karabakh war of two decades ago. With little in the way of commercial prospects, the film's poetic strengths should nonetheless continue to find favour among viewers.

Bleak and greatly wordless as this tale is, there's a certain quiet grandeur to its unfolding. The low-key, somber colors and elegant crane shots of Abdulrahim Besharat's lensing make Nabat inevitably part of a pitiless yet graceful landscape. Hamed Sabet's sorrowful string score is only occasional present, capping an assembly as handsome as it is spare.