Spoor

Spoor (Pokot, 2017) is a Polish crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM — directed by Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik, and adapted from Olga Tokarczuk's novel, written before she took the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018.

Janina Duszejko lives alone in the Klodzko Valley, close to the Czech border. She teaches English, studies horoscopes, nurses injured deer, and doesn't hide her contempt for the hunters who shoot through the surrounding forest. When her two dogs vanish and local men start turning up dead, Janina is certain she knows what's behind it. The animals are settling a score. Nobody believes her.

Dark, sardonic, and genuinely unsettling, the film never lets you decide whether Janina is a prophet or a crank — and that tension is the whole engine. Agnieszka Mandat's performance looks effortless and isn't. The film claimed a Special Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017. Stream Spoor online on iFILM.