A well-dressed couple and their child trek through a forest and enter a compound where a white tower block rises amidst verdant lawns and a manicured golf course. They are desperate for their residence application to be accepted in this dystopian world where everything outside the fence is, seemingly, dangerous.

With a touch of Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) and Maren Ade (Toni Erdmann) , Natalia Sinelnikova has created a world that could easily be our own, where the realities of inequality are amplified. Anna (Ioana Iacob) is the dour security guard who takes her job very seriously. There is a housing committee that decides the fate of residents and, above all, everyone must comply and look happy about it. It’s very white and very middle class, with Irish dancing, choirs and golf.

There are some people who are a little different, Wolfram (Moritz Jahn) is a poet who lives in the basement and is not allowed out of the lift. Anna herself is perhaps Polish, definitely Jewish, and on the surface fits in perfectly. But behind closed doors, her daughter Iris (Pola Geiger) refuses to leave the bathroom, believing she has the evil eye. When Gertis’s (Jörg Schüttauf) dog Willie goes missing, this small ripple becomes a wave that Anna can’t quell.

The metaphor is pretty clear – you are only safe if you are thoroughly white, thoroughly German. Any difference can be picked on and, once the paranoia of the oppressor begins, anyone can be made ‘the other’. The residence might be the UK voting for Brexit, Trump’s anti-immigration laws or Germany’s conservatism.

It’s a taut film where you feel no moment is wasted. Iacob is superb and embodies Anna’s experience as a migrant who must do so much more, be so much more just to be accepted. And of course we never see the dystopian outside. It’s possible it is much better than the residence.

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