The restless spirits of Portugal’s post-colonial underclass stumble through the latest film from one of the true poets of contemporary European cinema. Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa’s follow-up to his groundbreaking Colossal Youth is a hauntingly beautiful contemplation of his country's tumultuous past and uncertain future.

Once again it's about work, poverty, Portuguese history and the immigrant Cape Verdean community, as embodied by the charismatic septuagenarian Ventura, who seems to exist only as memory and myth. In this dream-like film, he meets relatives, social outsiders, a living statue and a whispering woman in search of the past. Any further attempt to describe the action would be to convey only a fraction of the film's cumulative power.

Scoring full marks for originality and conviction, this is deeply mysterious filmmaking working about as far from the commercial mainstream as it’s possible to do. It’s not a movie that comes to you. You have to go to it. Yes, there are likely to be long stretches in which you will have no idea what's going on but it’s not without reason that Sight & Sound Magazine voted it the third best film of 2014 in their end of year poll. Our advice? Surrender to it as you might a dream and let its haunting images overwhelm you. Because what may be a small film in terms of its outreach, looms very large in the weight of its ideas and its profound feeling for lives ground up and spit out by the threshing machine of history.

• The screening of Horse Money on Tue 22 Sept is part of our Cinébites deal: Get 30% off any main dish in the Café/Bar with a valid cinema ticket.

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