As the Syrian conflict enters its final convulsions, renewing memories of how the Sykes-Picot agreement – between an Englishman and a Frenchman – would cause more than a century of political resentment in the Arab world, The Outsider seems particularly piquant.

Beware the hidden powers of the cellphone. When in Never Here New York conceptual artist Miranda Fall (Mireille Enos) finds a stranger’s phone, she uses it as the basis for her next art show, tracking down and interviewing the owner’s contacts, listening to his music and using his GPS history to retrace his steps.

You might consider it odd that a man whose wife spends half the year in Hong Kong without him hasn’t managed to get around to catching a plane from Heathrow to visit her in the Far East, but that is the case with Jonah Mulray, the stressed-out protagonist of Strangers. Jonah’s excuse for his marital negligence is that he’s “scared of flying”.

In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible revenge. The bodies of murdered men, united in their penchant for hunting, have turned up in the forest, violently dead and rotting. Deer prints surround one corpse, beetles swarm another’s face and torso. Foxes escaped from an illegal fur farm need little motive to exact summary justice on their former jailor.

The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Yardie revisits the same world and era – it is bookended by heaving get-togethers in which sound systems pulse and throb.

In the time of composer John Gay, greed and self-interest were the main motives for life; and his work The Beggar’s Opera is an open critique on the way that society behaved. The work’s opening number sets the tone, basically saying: “we all abuse each other, we all steal from each other, we all want to get as much as we can and to hell with everybody else.”

They don’t make boxers like Freddie Mills any more. A granite lump of grinning charisma, he had a brow and jawline straight from a kids’ cartoon and, despite his humble origins and thuggish contours, a charmingly well-to-do voice. Mills was light heavyweight world champ for a time, then drifted into showbiz and, eventually, running a nightclub in Soho. Then he died in sudden and mysterious circumstances.

Childhood is an inimitable experience – the laws of the world are less certain, imagination and reality meld together, and no event feels fixed. A Sicilian Ghost Story recreates this sensation in the context of real world trauma, producing a unique and sometimes unsettling cinematic experience.

Luna (Julia Jedlikowska, pictured below) is a rather typical 12-year-old girl: precocious, imaginative, and very much infatuated with her classmate Giuseppe. Although they don’t have the same interests, they share something deeper, a comfort and belonging in each other’s company. On the walk home from school, the two dance around their attraction, Luna carrying a love letter for Giuseppe but denying it’s really for him. They’re chased by a dog, share a scooter ride, and he demonstrates his show horse; it’s a perfect day that ends in a kiss. Then, as if by magic, Giuseppe is gone.

Days and weeks pass, and no-one but Luna seems to care that Giuseppe’s not in school. At his house, no-one answers the door; his stone-faced mother stares hauntingly from the window. The adults of the village refuse to answer Luna’s questioning. Always prone to daydreaming, her imagination starts to run wild as she follows his ghost through the puzzle-like woods and deep lakes.Sicilian Ghost Story is dedicated to Giuseppe Di Matteo, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped by the Mafia after his father turned informant. Rather than a straight adaptation of this tragic story, writer/directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza bring a dark, fairytale quality to the film. Luna’s imagination becomes both her guide and her sanctuary as she tries to come to terms with the grim reality, hinting at a deeper, supernatural connection between the two.

It’s an unusual watch: memories are revisited with different outcomes, dream sequences are often presented as reality, and the internal logic is stretched to breaking point. It is, really, how we remember our childhood – we can recollect the feelings, but not always separate the fact from fiction. This makes for a film that is a pleasure to experience but sometimes frustrating to follow.

The cinematography and sound design create a woozy, hallucinogenic experience

It bares a passing resemblance to recent British indie release Pin Cushion. Both have a young female lead inclined to fantasy, but where Pin Cushion is quirky, Sicilian Ghost Story is something more elemental. The characters are at once dwarfed by and connected with the spectacular landscapes of Sicily. Animals are a constant, and countryside literally hisses and rattles around the humans. It’s at times pagan-like: there’s a deeper spiritual connection with nature that lasts longer than the temporary, evil actions of man.

Visually, the film is stunning. The cinematography and sound design create a woozy, hallucinogenic experience. A variety of wide lenses and low angles add a surrealness to Luna’s journey, drawing a clear line between her world and the standard shots deployed for adults. As the camera focuses on her determined vulnerability, there’s an element of Millie Bobby Brown in Julia Jedlikowska’s performance, only emphasised when her head is shaven. It is a complicated and heavy film to lead, and she does so with ease.

While Sicilian Ghost Story offers some interesting narrative devices, powerful visuals and strong performances, it’s too tonally confused to be considered a complete success. It creaks when toeing the line between fantasy and reality, never quite committing to either to the detriment of both. At times, it feels like Pan’s Labyrinth without the visual effects, or Twin Peaks without embracing the surreal – tons of potential, almost realised.

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@OwenRichards91

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Sicilian Ghost Story