Southcliffe (2013 Sean Durkin)

A gripping drama, made in the most simple way - it comes over like an arthouse film. Durkin prefers not to cut - scenes are in long takes, or from a distance, gently zooming in, or in the back of a car, then hopping out of the car with the driver. Which is all good, as far as I'm concerned - it places you in the action more, particularly in the awful scenes in which Sean Harris (a brilliant, BAFTA-winning performance) begins his shooting spree (it was only afterwards we realised there's no music score).

Grisoni set about making a film about grief - not even about a mass shooting - once the killing's over, there's a lot of what could be seen as insane behaviour (notably, a wedding ceremony with a coffin), but it's just about how people cope with loss. It's a complicated structure, but you don't lose track of where you are for a minute. (Obviously he then researched Dunblane, Hungerford and Whitehaven, the feelings of residents, survivors, that the killer was one of them.)

Rory Kinnear is the returned reporter who escaped an unhappy childhood there. With Eddie Marsan, Shirley Henderson and Kaya Skodelario, Anatol Yusef (unfaithful husband), Emma Cunniffe (his wife), Al Weaver (gay vicar in Grantchester), Amanda Drew (Kinnear's wife), Joe Dempsie (ex army), Louise Bell (his wife), George Bell (his uncle).

Of Faversham (North Kent), Grisoni says" I like the bleakness, I like the salt marshes, I like how the sea filters into the land, I like the pubs and the people around there and I like the fact it's not London. [Being] able to shoot there was incredible. It's got a real wildness about it." (Independent interview.) This is well caught in the moment a whitish fog rolls in.

Victoria Boydell knows when to cut in a (rare) close up. She often has someone talking in a scene to someone else, who we can't see, and uses her 'detached sound' here and there to good effect. She told us Durkin has a distinctive approach, only filming the material he needs, with one camera, trying to keep the action is a single shot. It was photographed by Hungarian Mátyás Erdély.

I am reminded of Van Gogh's self-portrait