Leap Year (18)

Starring: Monica del Carmen

Michael Rowe's debut feature is an unsettling study in loneliness and the terrible secret eating up a woman's soul.

Laura (Monica Del Carmen) spends hours gazing out of the window – she's a freelance journalist – and telling lies about her so-called social life in Mexico City. She counts off the days of February amid a dismal parade of TV suppers and an occasional one-night stand, but psychological relief comes, disturbingly, through a sadomasochistic relationship with a man named Arturo (Gustavo Sánchez Parra). The film, confined to Laura's small flat, is a tough watch, lowering, but it reaches towards a truth about even the busiest capital city: there's a lot of solitude to go round.