Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance lead a droll, carnivalesque political satire,on world leaders facing a global crisis.

At the G7 in rural Germany, international leaders meet to compose a vague statement against a vaguer looming threat, only for their own liaisons, fixations, and navel-gazing to hamper them at every step. A bigger distraction emerges when night falls, the outside world vanishes, and bog-preserved corpses start to revive – but even then, a sense of wider danger eludes them. Writing and directing with the Johnson brothers, Guy Maddin (The Forbidden Room, The Green Fog) outdoes himself again, blending sharp contemporary satire, classic small-scale farce, and practical B-movie visuals into another beautifully

strange, funny, and unpredictable masterwork. A top-level cast sells every joke: including Alicia Vikander as a European Commission Secretary-General, who falls for a giant brain.