Bad Boy Bubby

Bubby is thirty five and has spent his entire life in one room with his mother, who has convinced him the air outside is poison. One day he walks out of the door and starts seeing the world at thirty five, knowing nothing about it. The method is as strange as the story. Rolf de Heer used a different cinematographer for each new location, thirty two people in total, and shot in sequence, so the film's way of looking changes as Bubby sees more. The sound was recorded binaurally, with two microphones fixed behind Nicholas Hope's ears, so the audience hears everything exactly as Bubby hears it. It competed at Venice in 1993 and won five prizes there. The difficulty is that the first half hour is genuinely hard, with abuse, violence and cruelty to an animal. The humour in the second half does not erase that opening. Who it is for: viewers willing to take on unusual and disturbing cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids distressing scenes.