The Harvesters

This darkly powerful psychodrama finds fear and tension in its hermetic world of rural farming and religious immersion amid the almost contradictory beauty of its sprawling South African locale.

A slow-burning and increasingly suffocating variation on the myth of Cain and Abel, The Harvesters (Die Stropers) is the impressive feature debut from Greek-South African filmmaker Etienne Kallos.

This sternly moving, vividly shot rural drama draws quasi-Biblical resonance from its tale of teenage foster brothers locked in a familial and cultural power struggle on a remote farmstead.

It's a film with uncomfortable weight, one that slowly but surely crushes you in the way any society presses on those who don't fit in.