Gets an unfair rap as "extreme" or "weird"...

This is an amazing low-budget, punk-art achievement by director Rolf de Heer. A great, great film that gets an unfair rap as "extreme" or "weird" cinema, when really it's quite beautiful, humanist and optimistic.

Yes, it starts claustrophobic and emotionally violent. But it blooms. It runs at what it means to be alive, to learn, to grow, to create art, to love and hate, to be loved, and to become a genuine thing instead of a mimicry of past experiences. For a film to start at such a narrow singular point and then successfully expand so fully is an incredible achievement.

It's getting called uneven on these boards, as if shiny, machine-crafted films are more valuable than a movie about life that's always changing and evolving, its perspectives unset and roaming. Like Bubby, like you, like me, this movie is looking for something. So few films feel this organic and out of sync to me.

And the theme - that even if you come from a horrible place, even if the world around you is sh!t, it doesn't mean you can't become a better person - well, that's beautiful. That's art. This is cinema.