Death comes as a giant macaw in this A24 fairytale about letting go, featuring a career-best turn from Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Tuesday is living with – and slowly dying from – a terminal degenerative illness. But whereas she has reached the stage of acceptance, her mother Zora (Louis-Dreyfus) is still stuck in denial, deriving comfort from pretending that everything’s fine. When Death comes a-knockin’ in the form of a lonely, overworked giant macaw in need of a bath and fond of classic hip-hop, Tuesday bonds with the spectre. Zora, meanwhile, bargains for more time with her daughter.

Riffing on the age-old notion of stalling Death – perhaps most famously incarnated in cinema in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal – the debut feature from London-based Croatian writer/director Daina O. Pusić offers a distinctive, singular vision of mortality. Her memorable rendering of it as an enormous, shape-shifting bird is at once absurd, disturbing and warm-hearted. Nimbly dealing with the emotional complexities of grief and propelled by an affecting performance from the iconic actor and comedian, Tuesday marks a fantastic, fantastical first feature from a filmmaker to watch.

“Sees the gifted Louis-Dreyfus channel her brilliant knack for comic neurosis into dark, weird territory that’s steeped in grief … delving into a sphere of emotion that she’s never before explored onscreen.” – Hollywood Reporter