Set on the island of Sumba (between Bali and Timor) with dialogue partly in the local dialect, this centres on the nine-year-old boy Lewa, whose life changes when an ad-man shooting a commercial gives him a Polaroid camera. Lewa’s questions find their ultimate expression in the eponymous letter to an angel; when Lewa discovers that the consoling reply he receives was forged by a teacher, he’s provoked to his greatest rage. The film ends with Lewa in a rehabilitation centre, his Polaroids collaged on the wall of his room. Garin spoke at the time of being influenced by the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus (the seminal expression of existentialist philosophy), but the influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems stronger in the film’s mix of documentary and fantasy. Lewa with his Polaroid camera is very obviously a surrogate for the director with his movie camera, and the film shows Lewa surrounded by stimuli of all kinds, from Elvis Presley to tribal conflicts, from an image of the Virgin Mary to an animal purification ceremony. Tony Prabowo’s score, blending traditional musics with experimental electronica, reinforces the sense of a cultural melting pot. Tony Rayns