In rural Anatolia a prosecutor, a police chief, a doctor and various policemen and diggers escort two prisoners around the steppes in search of a dead body. Given the prisoners' hazy memory of where said body is, this search goes well into the evening and early hours of the morning. This provides much time for weary discussion and reflection, and even a midnight dinner rest in a small village, where some encounters (particularly the appearance of the mayor's daughter) appear magical through the tired eyes of the men.

This movie is what real cinema is all about. The scenes at night (which takes up the first 75% of the movie) are superbly shot, and hypnotically draw you in (to the extent that I even started to feel cold in a heated cinema, such was the effectiveness of the wind through the trees). But you have to give yourself over to it - if you're someone who can get bored through the slow parts of an Ice Age movie, for example, then I have no qualms about warning you away from this, as your ADHD will not cope. For the rest of us however, as long as you are prepared for a meditative enveloping experience, you won't be disappointed. My interest waned slightly in the last act, after the sun has risen, as it didn't have the same hypnotic effect. But the rest of this Cannes-winning film is worth every second.