How she has arrived at this pass constitutes the film’s story. The girl, Lilya (Oksana Akinshina), is 16 and not that sweet, but then who would be with a life like hers? Abandoned by her mother, who has just relocated to the States, Lilya must cope as best she can around their dismal housing estate somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Her aunt, a vile old hag, kicks her out of the family apartment, advising her to do as her mother did: “Go into town and spread your legs.” Every day Lilya checks the mailbox, hoping for word from her mother, but none arrives.Sickeningly, inexorably, those who should help Lilya instead betray her. First her mother and her aunt, then her teacher and her friend Natasha (Elina Beninson) turn a cold shoulder. Why? What has she done to deserve such unkindness? Moodysson doesn’t presume to provide answers; he simply observes the unfolding tragedy. It is hard to imagine a more poignant image of the girl, kneeling in the mud she slipped in while trying to call her mother back (a dog then trots over and gives her a sympathetic sniff).

Even now, though, one senses that there will be worse to follow. Her only friend in the world turns out to be Volodya (Artyom Bogucharskij), a fellow waif who has been kicked out of his home and seeks shelter in Lilya’s dank, dreadful flat. “No funny stuff,” she warns him as they bed down for the night on a stained mattress. No funny stuff: we will remember this phrase afterwards with a shudder.The idea of children pulling together against the neglect or abuse of the supposed grown-ups also runs through Together and Moodysson’s earlier feature Show Me Love. Children are obliged to become wise before their time simply because adults can’t be relied upon. Lilya begins to turn tricks, sacrificing the last of her childhood in order to survive; in spangly top and eyeliner she looks far too young for the hooker’s life, but what happens later brutally strips away that illusion. At one point she thinks she has met her saviour, a friendly young man named Andrei (Pavel Ponomarev) who promises her a life of prosperity across the Baltic Sea in Sweden – they have jobs there! For a while we are as keen to believe Andrei as Lilya is.By degrees our hope trickles away, and what Lilya finds in the drab precincts of Malmo is infinitely worse than the life she has left behind.

Close-ups of pale men, faces sweaty and contorted, loom horribly over the lens: Moodysson uses his camera so that we see these fleshy transactions from Lilya’s point of view, until the faces blur into a long, grotesque montage.So how keen are you to see this tale of raped innocence? How much do you want to know about the squalor of human trafficking? Moodysson introduces a supernal element late in the story that mitigates the agony, but only a little. When you have been through what Lilya has, the appearance of a guardian angel who tells you, “This world isn’t that good” feels pretty redundant Oblivion seems a blessed release. Lilya 4-Ever is a film to dread in advance, and to flinch at in duration.Nevertheless, and this is the curious part, I felt glad to have seen it. For one thing, I wouldn’t want to have missed Oksana Akinshina and Artyom Bogucharskij as the modern Hansel and Gretel, preyed upon by witches and devils, yet still capable of love while they have each other. It feels somehow typical of Lilya that the first thing she buys with her trick money is a basketball for Volodya, whose astonishment suggests that no one has given him anything, ever. Cherish that moment – there are few such in Lilya 4-Ever.. The Scottish writer Anne Donovan makes a surprise entry on the shortlist for the Orange Prize today with her first novel.

Edinburgh-born Shena Mackay is shortlisted for her novel Heligoland, the Canadian Carol Shields for Unless and the American writer Valerie Martin for Property.Last night Donovan, an English teacher at a Glasgow high school, revealed that she had taken up writing only in 1995 after attending a writers’ workshop. “I had studied English literature at university in Glasgow which meant I was too intimidated to write properly, to finish anything off or to show my writing to anyone,” she said.”I am still teaching part-time at Hillhead High School but had already decided to write full-time even before I knew I was on the Orange long-list.”Donovan won the Macallan short story competition in 1997 and three years later was awarded the Canongate Prize. Hieroglyphics and Other Stories, her first collection of short stories, was published in 2001.The Orange judges described Buddha Da, a soft-centred domestic comedy written in the Glasgow vernacular, as a “stunning debut novel”. They said that Donovan “completely captures these lives in her clear-eyed, evocative prose, rendered alternately in the voices of each of the main characters”.They added: “With seamless grace and astonishing veracity, Buddha Da treats serious themes with humour and its characters with humanity.”Donovan said she had been inspired to write in the vernacular by Glasgow’s thriving literary community, which is providing a complementary voice to the Edinburgh writing led by Irvine Welsh.Edinburgh-based Canongate had a second newcomer in the Orange long-list with Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room. The novel had been bought on the strength of 30,000 words and has gone on to sell more than 35,000 copies in hardback.Judges for the prize, now in its eighth year, include Margaret Reynolds, Reader in English at Queen Mary College, and the model and recently published author Sophie Dahl. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 3 June.The final sixAnne Donovan: Buddha DaShena Mackay: HeligolandValerie Martin: PropertyCarol Shields: UnlessZadie Smith: The Autograph ManDonna Tartt: The Little Friend.