Allergic to blockbusters? See Wakolda

Wakolda is not a sunny film for a sunny day, just so you’re aware, but as there is so little else around — August is a hopeless month for films; August is a dumping ground for the sub-par — you are going to have to take that on the chin, bear it as best you can, and while this is not sunny it is, at least, masterfully made. Set in Argentina in 1960, it’s a fictional imagining of how a German doctor insinuates himself on a family, and how that doctor turns out to be Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death’ from the Nazi concentration camps. It’s not a thriller exactly. Instead, it is an unsettling, atmospheric, mood-driven piece, which, I should add, just so you’re aware, also features creepy dolls. That’s how un-sunny it is.

This is the third film from Lucía Puenzo (XXY, The Fish Child), who, in this instance, directed, produced, wrote the script, and also the book on which it is based.