The film: Lucile Hadzihalilovic's first full-length feature film has mesmerised audiences and won awards on the European festival circuit. An intriguing and visually ravishing piece, Innocence revolves around a mysterious girls-only boarding school that is sealed off from the rest of the world by walls and dense forests. The startlingly fresh and absorbing narrative unfurls with the arrival of six-year-old Iris (Zoe Auclair) at the school, where she emerges from a coffin.

In her induction, the child meets two teachers and an array of ageing janitors in a place with an ethereal interest in nature and activities such as lake swims, practising acrobatics, and natural-science classes.

Innocence is an intense watch. There are no explanations about the rationale of the school, its pupils' backgrounds, or their unique curriculum, but it is ripe with symbolism.

The school's stress on the liberation of the girls' physicality nears a fascist obsession with physical perfection. And pupils who rebel against the squeaky-clean tedium - or fail to make the grade - are seen taking frustrating shortcuts to oblivion in botched attempts to escape.

The girls are all dressed in short, white skirts, socks and ribbons of a variety of hues to suggest a sexual innocence that could be upheld by the school's fragile detachment from the outside world. But audiences might wonder what the senior pupils such as Bianca (Berangere Haubruges) are doing in the woods every night.

The extras: There's an interview with Hadzihalilovic, in which she explains some of the film's symbolic flourishes, but that's about it.

The verdict: Thought-provoking without being visually provocative, Innocence is one of the most artful films from Europe in recent years.