“Nuttily wonderful… Best of 2006.” - New York TimesEqual parts childhood reminiscence, expressionist horror movie, teen detective serial and Grand Guignol reverie, Brand Upon the Brain! is a majestic silent-style movie. The fictionalised story sees house painter Guy Maddin (Erik Steffen Maahs) arrive by rowboat at the island that was his childhood home. As he readies himself to repaint the family lighthouse at the request of his dying mother, he is overwhelmed with the memories of a turbulent childhood. Shot in grainy black and white, this thought-provoking exercise in stretching film vocabulary to its limits represents Maddin's work at its paradoxically most sophisticated and incautious. Another Maddin masterstroke that joins previous screenings at MIFF (The Saddest Music in the World, Cowards Bends the Knee) as something audiences are unlikely to forget.