Leviathan offers a bracing take on a familiar tale: the struggle of a solitary figure against an unjust system. In a remote Russian village, part-time mechanic Kolya ignites a labyrinthine game of corruption and intimidation when he recruits a lawyer friend from Moscow to contest the forced purchase of his property. Epic, bleak and cut through with inimitable wit, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film is at once a precise critique of contemporary Russia and an otherworldly parable.