Asif Kapadia is another director who carves stories out of vast, empty landscapes. His cruel thriller, Far North, set on the Arctic tundra, could hardly be further removed from Australia. Yet it is similarly in awe of ancient magic. Michelle Yeoh is an Inuit outcast, cursed at birth and destined to die alone. She lives like a ghost on the shoreline, drifting from one stony beach to the next with her adopted daughter (Michelle Krusiec).

The discovery of a half-dead Russian deserter, glued to the ice, acts like a sunlamp on their frozen sexual emotions. Sean Bean plays the grateful soldier to craggy perfection, keeping a wary distance while his wounds heal. But the intimacy turns poisonous when the teenage Krusiec slides ever more brazenly into Bean's corner of the tent. Yeoh wordlessly bottles her jealousy, and simply gets on with the brutal business of survival. Yet every scrap of film resonates with Yeoh's raw and monumental sense of injustice: the slag-heaps of volcanic rock; the bitter weather; the dirty miles of glacial ice.

Kapadia has had several stumbles since his Bafta award-winning debut, The Warrior (2001). This is an impressive return to form for the British director, even if the final ghastly twist of Far North is barely watchable.

15, 89 minutes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette