Showing in the aptly-named No Limits strand, this documentary essay by Marseilles-born Magnum photographer Antoine d'Agata is an uncompromising examination of two global ever-presents:

prostitution and drug addiction. It goes without saying that it's graphic in what it depicts, but d'Agata's consummate cinematography and his preference for long shots and slow-moving tableaux makes the squalor painterly, almost beautiful. That's the first contradiction. The second is that d'Agata enters the film as a participant, a common working method for this drug- and risk-taking controversialist. Reportage, this isn't. Nobody speaks and faces are often half-hidden. Instead the soundtrack is given over to women talking about their lives in whatever language is their own (D'Agata filmed and recorded in Havana, Phnom Penh, Kiev and Mumbai among other places). There's much mention of chaos, skin, lies, fear and "yama" or "ice" or whatever it is the woman call their drug of choice. If Dante, Caravaggio and Francis Bacon had been given a camera to play with and unlimited air travel, here's what the circles of hell might have looked like.