NINE QUEENS (NUEVE REINAS) International Competition

Avoiding guns, explosives and the excesses of a Hollywood budget, Argentine director Fabian Bielinsky has crafted one of the most gripping, irrepressible thrillers in recent memory.

Two small-time swindlers, Juan and Marcos, agree to team up, but only on a one-day trial. Their first few hustles reveal obvious and seemingly incompatible differences between the two men. But, when the potential for a big-time heist falls into their laps, the two men try to set aside their differences and trust one another in a last-minute attempt to become rich and move on to a better, simpler life.

Like Hitchcock, Bielinsky reworks the conventions of the genre, forging a new kind of thriller marked by dense psychological layering, naturalism and brilliant hairpin turns.