The main competition winner at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's tense, nocturnal road movie about a young couple on the run will leave audiences alternately thrilled and terrified.

On the run in the dark of night, a young Indian couple – Durga and her lover, Kabeer – are picked up by two men in a minivan who offer to give them a ride to the train station. Things turn sinister when the drivers turn out to be less friendly than they first seemed, and the film plunges its characters into a deadly, claustrophobic nightmare on the road.

Largely improvised, Kumar Sasidharan's third feature is interwoven with documentary footage of a grisly Hindu festival in honour of the goddess Kali, in which men dance in ecstasy and are speared and hung from wires in divine offering. Taken together, these strands form a provocative exploration of the patriarchal, often violent attitudes towards women in Indian society.

'An atmospheric evocation of dangerous darkness in the middle of nowhere.' – The Hollywood Reporter

As part of The Bigger Picture program, Sexy Durga will be introduced by Dr Alison Horbury from the Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.