Leap Year

Winner of the Camera D’Or for Best First Feature at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, this outstanding debut of Australian director Michael Rowe is a character study in loneliness, featuring an extraordinary leading performance by Mónica Del Carmen.

It is a highly charged sexual thriller, set within the confines of a Mexican apartment, which follows 29 days in the dispirited life of freelance journalist Laura Lopez, as she moves from one anonymous sexual encounter to another. Soon, Laura meets Arturo, and before long she is submitting to demeaning sexual acts as part of their relationship, a tragic psychological reaction to a secret trauma from her past, which occurred on the previous leap year. With a red square around a date on her calendar wall, the wheels are set in motion for what will turn out to be a startling conclusion.