The Abandoned

Although the making-of featurette crams in interviews with cast and crew, behind-the-scenes footage, and even storyboards, at a mere 13 minutes in duration it feels somewhat superficial. Cerdà stresses his choice to use "the most mechanical effects possible" to create an ambience of realism rather than going "over the top", and suggests that by bringing together a Spanish director and a multicultural cast to a film set in Russia, shot in Bulgaria and featuring English and Russian dialogue, he was able to enrich the film's themes of disorientation.

Unusually, the optional English subtitles are strictly SDH, leaving all Russian dialogue untranslated – but again this allows viewers to experience something of the English-speaking protagonist's disorientation. Still, when the extras are so bare, one is left wishing that Cerdà's outstanding earlier half-hour short films Aftermath (1994) and Genesis (1998) had also been included. Even his debut, the eight-minute The Awakening (1990) would have been welcome. Instead, we just get a Momentum Pictures trailer reel.