Fairytale

Aleksandr Sokurov puts Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill together in a kind of purgatory. All four wait, approach a door, turn back, and remark on each other's smell, clothes and piety. The film is made entirely from archive footage, with faces and voices processed and recombined so that several versions of the same man can occupy one frame. The result sits oddly between animation and document, and that oddness is the point: even after death these men keep up the same empty talk and none of them accounts for anything. Sokurov shows them as insecure and self-admiring rather than monstrous. It premiered at Locarno in 2022. Who it is for: viewers open to experimental form and art cinema built on history. Who it is not for: anyone expecting narrative, since this is a circuit rather than a story.