"Mein Herz Brennt" ("My Heart Burns") roars the vocalist on the thrash-garage opening soundtrack setting the tone for Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's angry, empassioned cry from the heart. Moodysson, who has already distinguished himself with humourous, social commentary pieces such as coming-of-age comedy Fucking Amal and commune satire Together pulls no punches in this unmitigatedly bleak view of teenagers growing up in the former Soviet Union.

Even the title is laced with acerbic irony - Lilya (Oksana Akinshina), the sixteen-year-old girl at the centre of the film, is shown in the first scene about to throw herself off a road bridge into the path of passing cars. The rest of the film charts how she got to this point.

Teenage angst seems magnified tenfold in this place described at the opening only as "somewhere that was once the former Soviet Union". After her mother abandons her to emmigrate to America, the grief-stricken Lilya finds that she must fend for herself. Although spirited (when she is scrawling "Lilya 4-Ever" on a park bench a bunch of boys are running to beat her up) she is too young and ill-equiped to avoid the pitfalls of a dog-eat-dog society. Prostitution is easy, glue-sniffing the norm, family means nothing, fellow teens are vicious, and foreigners are exploitative. The buildings are crumbling or deserted, the wallpaper soiled and the fabric of society has been shredded. No wonder everyone wants to get the hell out.

The film has a startling authenticity, but Moodysson avoids totally overwhelmingly us with grimness thanks to Oksana Akinshina's revelatory performance as the determined and optimistic Lilya and Artyom Bogucharsky as the cocky young boy, Volodja, who she forms a big-sister friendship with. Moodysson also keeps the story rolling along, offering music montages and flashes of magic realism to balance out the dark mood. Not a film that you sit down to enjoy, but one that provides a welcome battering ram against cosy notions of the caring capitalism of the West.