A remarkable expression of the post-documentary moment that seems to be defining a new major stage in contemporary world cinema, The Anchorage is a purposely enigmatic film shaped around the lonely rituals and plain pleasures of a widow living in a forest on a remote Swedish archipelago. Although it stars co-director Edström’s mother and closely follows the intimate details and rhythms of her daily life, the film skillfully defies any neo-realist appearances by using its extreme restraint of story, sound and dialogue not to create a contemplative minimalism but rather to sustain a steadily increasing yet ambiguous tension. As The Anchorage unfolds a series of pointed yet irresolvable appeals to specific genre expectations – of the horror film, the melodrama, the Bergmanian art film – investing objects and film’s few characters with a mysterious aura.