Director: Nina Menkes

A film paced and designed like no other on this list, Nina Menkes’s elliptical drama hones in on Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), an alienated blackjack dealer living on the fringes of Vegas who spends her days (and the sub-80 minute runtime) tending to a bedbound elderly man, eavesdropping on the screaming matches of her motel neighbours, and navigating the sparse landscape outside of the Strip, watching burning trees, train tracks and still expanses of water.

Menkes favours industrial film-style observational shots (complete with deliberate zooms), a style that only emphasises how inaccessible Firdaus’s inner world is to an undiscerning viewer. There’s something aggressive about the mundanity of the centrepiece casino sequence – a lengthy dialogue-free montage of blackjack under a pristine, cavern-like ceiling of mirrors and colourful lightbulbs. Here, Queen of Diamonds’ thesis appears, mirage-like in its conflicting detail and abstractness: in a medium of cause-and-effect image-making, pursuing meaninglessness has a sobering effect.