10 Best Movie Performances From Nameless Characters

Firstly, do not watch this film with your parents… seriously, don’t. Secondly, strap yourself in because this is a bumpy ride.

Before he became a Hollywood household name and three-time Academy Award nominee for films such as The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos’ native Greek language indie flick Dogtooth acted as his cinematic eureka moment. The film itself, however, is not for the faint-hearted.

Dogtooth has a seemingly simple premise of a father who refuses to watch his children grow up, but it's far more complicated and disturbing than that.

The patriarch of the family, Christos Stergioglou’s monstrous 'Father' manipulates his children by entrapping them in a perpetual and equally perverse state of childhood, drilling into them that they are only allowed to leave the ‘safety’ of their home when either their left or right dogtooth falls out… totally normal.

This 2009 picture features a string of fantastic performances, so there are plenty of names to pick and choose from, but Angeliki Papoulia deserves singling out. Papoulia’s 'Older Daughter' is by far and away the most adventurous, curious and complex of her siblings, and as the film nears its conclusion, that’s where she really stands out from the rest and earns her plaudits as her controlling father’s unsettling ‘utopia’ quickly begins to unravel before his very eyes.

In what was undoubtedly a challenging production for all the actors involved, Papoulia’s performance perfectly exhibits the inhumanity of their purgatory.