Or, “The Prisoners of Abkhazia Redux”. Astrid Bussink’s lovely documentary - you couldn’t really make this up - traces the strange history of an even stranger research institute, hidden away in an obscure corner of what was once the Soviet Union. Here, more or less mad scientists conducted very strange experiments on primates, only to be foiled by the untimely demise of the CCCP. Like many of the Soviet Union’s former subjects, these clever monkeys promptly ran off once the collapse was complete.

And while Abkhazia itself was recently brought back to the fold of Russian citizenry, the monkeys themselves have entered the realm of myths and legends – a lost colony hidden in the woods of a lost colony. Bussink’s film is a Cold War ghost story of sorts – walking us through the rusting carcass of a colonial empire, a ruin haunted by nostalgia, dreams and nightmares, only to prove that truth remains far stranger than any fiction.

Sindre Kartvedt