ADiff review: Evolution’s strange sci-fi will blow your mind

Light House 1, Friday 19th, 9.15pm, 81 min

Nicolas (Max Brebant) fears that he might have seen a corpse while swimming around the volcanic island where he lives with his mother, and, indeed, where all boys live with their mothers in samey white houses, eating noodles that might be worms and drinking purple medicine. Things get curiouser and curiouser: the "mothers" enjoy polysexual commune by night using unfamiliar orifices. Meanwhile, Nicolas and his peers are ultimately transferred to the hospital, where mysterious medical interventions await. Sexual functions have seldom seemed odder and ickier than in Lucile Hadzihalilovic's long-awaited follow-up to the thoroughly discombobulating 2005 drama Innocence. If you like your sci-fi cerebral and your mind blown – ahoy there, fans of Jonathan Glazer's similarly eerie Under the Skin or Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's Amer – then this nightmarish masterpiece will be the highlight of the entire festival programme.

Can't see this? Try the beguiling coming-of-age drama Mustang, Light House 3, 9.15pm