In this dark fairytal Swedish actress Eva Melander buries herself in the role of Tina, an ostracized woman who feels out of place in society because of her otherworldly appearance. The peculiar creature she plays in director Ali Abbasi’s foreign-language Oscar submission suggests the unholy offspring of Quasimodo and a Tolkien Orc. But that’s just the starting point for an entrancing and unexpected love story when Tina — who works a lonely job in border security, using her rat-like sense of smell — wakes up to her superpowers when she meets a fawning man (Eero Milonoff) who looks just like her.

The fascinations of filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose motto is “art is life and life is art,”are captured like butterflies and arranged in an alphabet, a form that suits him perfectly as an encyclopedist. In intimate conversations with his perceptive 16-year-old daughter Zoë, we discover the whos, whats and whys about Greenaway. They begin with A, which stands for Amsterdam, but could also stand for autism, Zoë suggests. Greenaway’s boundless creativity, unconstrained flow of words and passion for collecting certainly bring this to mind, and he admits to wearing the label with pride. The playful conversations don’t shy away from more painful topics; we hear that Greenaway hasn’t seen two other children of his for years. And later, heartbroken and in tears, Zoë asks him if for once he’ll stop talking like a commentator. Zoë’s spontaneous questions penetrate Greenaway to the core, enabling his wife, multimedia artist Saskia Boddeke, to make a deeply personal portrait not only of the artist, but also of Greenaway the father in his battle against time.

Ryszard Kapuscinski was one of the 20th century’s principal and most colourful war reporters. He reported on 27 revolutions during his career, was imprisoned 40 times and sentenced to death four times. He was primarily active in Africa as a correspondent for a Polish news agency. When civil war erupted in Angola in 1975, he was the only foreign reporter on the ground. His book Another Day of Life describes how that diamond and oil-rich country was used as a Cold War pawn.

Kapuscinski’s writing style is subjective, sometimes even surreal. This animated adaptation does complete justice to his form of literary reportage. Hallucinatory impressions of chaotic firefights are recorded in a graphic-novel-like style. Interviews with the main characters were made in real life, 40 years later – some have become successful, others have gone mad. This is a story, but no work of fiction.