Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

Inspector Glebsky is called out to a remote hotel in the mountains. When he arrives there is no crime; there is a handful of guests who are odd but appear harmless. Then an avalanche cuts the hotel off from the world and events start to leave the shape of a detective story. Glebsky faces a situation the rules he carries cannot explain, and the real question becomes not solving the crime but deciding what to do. Grigori Kromanov's film adapts the 1970 novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who also wrote the screenplay. The narrative sets itself up first as a locked-room mystery, then shifts into science fiction, and finally settles on a purely moral problem. This Estonian production was shot at the Shymbulak ski resort in Kazakhstan. Sven Grünberg's synthesiser score and Tõnu Virve's sets are what carries the film today. Who it's for: Viewers who like Soviet-era science fiction, Strugatsky adaptations, and genre-crossing mysteries. Who it's not for: The pace is slow and the explanations are deliberately incomplete. Anyone arriving with genre expectations may not be satisfied.