As a cinematographer, Chris Doyle most famously created the impressionistic neon-infused cityscapes for Wong Kar-wai’s hip, hyperreal paeans to lovesick urban drifters – among them Chungking Express, In The Mood for Love (EIFF 2000) and 2046. Doyle has also worked with filmmakers as diverse as Edward Yang, Zhang Yimou, Gus Van Sant, Philip Noyce, M Night Shyamalan and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang on some of the most visually distinctive films of recent decades. For this idiosyncratic, shadowy political thriller, however, Doyle takes on directorial responsibilities, while lensing is handled by his recent collaborator Rain Kathy Li.

Warsaw Dark was inspired by the mysterious death in 2001 of the one-time Polish minister for sport, Jacek Debski, a murder thought to have been ordered by crime bosses protecting their interests.

Like the darkest thrillers of David Lynch – Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; Lost Highway; Mulholland Drive – Warsaw Dark links political corruption to romantic infatuation and sexual fetishism as well as financial greed: desire pervades everything, and neither secrets nor power games are confined to the boardroom. In real life, Dabski was lured to his death by a prostitute named Inka, who subsequently declined to give the names of her co-conspirators. In Maciej Pisarek’s screenplay, the bait is renamed Ojka. Played by Anna Przybylska, she is the film’s emotional core as well as its lust object: she is controlled by a pimp, but driven by love for her hitman boss.

Doyle – whose work has never shied away from evoking the pleasures of the flesh – foregrounds the story’s carnal component, but no less intriguing is the elliptical, impressionistic narrative style. Doyle has long presented the notion of filmmaking as akin to dancing: rhythmic, physical, music-driven, and based upon exchange between moving elements. Warsaw Dark is a decadent nocturnal tango, which sets the mysteries of political intrigue against the secrets of the human heart.