Renegade Films

The film tells the story of the Blanche family who run a dark and dismal health resort on a remote island which is only accessible by ferry. The spa program consists of feeding the guests seaweed and eel-based meals, then administering liberal colonic irrigation. The spa is run by the family matriarch Dame Blanche until her death. Things continue on with her children running the resort until Kath, the resort's former sous chef and love interest of one of the sons, comes back to the island unannounced. Stranded between monthly ferries, she is a catalyst for a series of events that turns life as it is known at Hotel Splendide on its ear.

Drawing surprising connections between market methods and CIA torture techniques developed in the 1950s, the film explores how well-known events of the recent past have been theaters for the shock doctrine, from Pinochet's coup in Chile, to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to the war in Iraq today.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

Former police officer Jesus Vissarion is the soul of Siberia. His 4,000 disciples follow a strict regime of no meat, no eggs, no milk, no fish, no alcohol, no smoking and very little money. Filmmaker George Carey touches down in the obscure Siberian outpost of Minusinsk, just in time to join in the fun and frolics at Vissarion's big festival, taking place in Sun City, the new Promised Land, roughly 200 miles north of Mongolia. George is approached by Vissarion's closest apostle, a former rock singer called Vadim Redkin, who says he can take him to meet the great man...