John Maclean | 2015 | UK/New Zealand | 84'

Something special is happening with the genre of the western. Before series like Westworld and Godless obliterated all expectations about “cowboys and indians”, small British indie film Slow West, the debut of Scottish director John Maclean, was doing that very thing. This pitch-black comedy in the style of Cormac McCarthy is a self-aware and deconstructed version of the western, where gallows humour and random extreme violence never seize to surprise the seasoned film viewer. In this way, the genre that provides the best comparison for the foundations of American society (with its machismo, love of weapons and treatment of people of colour) becomes a wonderfully cynical antidote to the absurd American behaviour we see today.