The most effective horror story this week is Ulrich Seidl’s Import/Export, a cruelly cool-headed portrait of modern Europe, its porous boundaries and the emotional and social costs to the economic migrants who cross those boundaries in search of a better life.

Olga, a single mother, is a nurse in Ukraine; she faces a stark choice – supplement her meagre wages by working in an internet sex parlour or move West. She chooses Austria. Meanwhile, Paul, a young Austrian, takes a job in Ukraine with his sweat stained lech of a stepfather.

There is the occasional glimpse of humour in Seidl’s bleak vision, but more often the director relies on an unflinching, prolonged gaze on human humiliations: a profoundly depressing sequence in which the stepfather mocks a teenage Ukrainian prostitute is particularly hard to take.

Seidl has a distinctive and disturbing vision, but he is not inclined to explore the humanity of his characters, just their status as victim or abuser.

18, 135 minutes

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