Dogtooth

Dogtooth (Kynodontas, 2009) is a Greek drama by Yorgos Lanthimos you can watch online on iFILM. Behind a high wall on the edge of town lives a family: a father, a mother and three grown children who have never once stepped past the gate.

The parents have engineered a reality of their own. Planes overhead are toys, "the sea" means an armchair, and the word "zombie" stands for a small yellow flower. By the family's rule, you may leave the estate only when your right dogtooth falls out. The single outsider allowed in is Christina, a security guard from the father's plant, brought in so the son can satisfy his urges. She is the one who smuggles the first videotapes past the fence, and the sealed world starts to crack. Christos Stergioglou and Angeliki Papoulia play it so flat that the ordinary feels more menacing than any violence.

Lanthimos built a severe parable about control, language and the cruelty of upbringing, years before The Lobster and Poor Things. The film took the top Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. This is uncompromising cinema that offers the viewer no comfort. Stream Dogtooth (2009) online on iFILM.