You’ve heard this one before, a land surveyor named K arrives in a distant village and becomes ensnared in the nearby castle’s procedural machinations. Yet this time round, things are different. As K traverses the vast Inner Mongolian plain, there’s no castle on the horizon and his arrival in the village is merely an abrupt awakening on a sunny afternoon. His two leather-clad assistants are hardly as alike as snakes, and Jeremiah, not Artur is to be their name.

This village is nearly all interiors, tight shots of hallways, lobbies and antechambers in various shades of white, green and blue.