Following his award-winning video for Aigel's You're Born, and the experimental short Malaria, Latvian director Andzej Gavriss's latest project is a big step forward into cinematic narrative - a dark, boldly imagined story of a damaged rock singer, on a rehab program like no other.

Filmed in Ukraine, and co-produced by 2332 Films, Eleusis is a tremendously atmospheric fantasy-thriller, where the catatonic pop singer Ivan is delivered into the custody of a mysterious sanitorium which guarantees the creative rejuvenation of its patients - but at a terrible cost.

The rock star (Ivan Dorn) must suffer ordeals at the hands of the Nurse Cratchet-like mystic (played by Natalia Kara) who leads a coven of maidens to send him into delirium, and make him suffer nightmarish dreams - all made breathlessly plausible by the mesmerizing quality of the production. 

With both an extraordinarily grand location and excellent cast - including the Ostapenko brothers, three identical triplets who play the sanatorium's security detail - Gavriss builds his story on a movie-like scale, ably assisted by a talented team including production designer Julija Fricsone Gavriss and cinematographer Jacob Moller, to its harrowing climax.

Eleusis is over twenty minutes in length, and it is a riveting watch from first to last. And surely it is the calling card to ensure that Gavriss's future lies in feature films.