The tone is Rabelaisian and earthily comic in the minimalist, picturesque squalor of the settings.

With a title that translates roughly as Attaboy!, this engaging and percipient period comedy focuses on the enslavement of the Roma people in 19th-century Romania.

Somehow director Radu Jude's decision to film in black-and-white only heightens that sense of reality: It's as if the film is some ancient newsreel.

As such, the title - at once jolly and sharply condemning - is a perfect reflection of the tone of the film, which uses its sharp wit and laughs like a knife.