FJORD***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 11

FJORD is a stunning piece of provocative film-making from Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu. It makes for uncomfortable viewing because it forces us to confront our own prejudices and to educate ourselves about our own countries. 

The action begins in a remote Norwegian town where a new family is welcomed warmly with woollen mittens and apple cakes. The father is Romanian, the mother is Norwegian, they have five kids including a nursing infant, and they are evangelical Christians.  Their differing religious and cultural norms soon bring them up against the profoundly progressive liberal norms of the town.  

The teachers call in social services because the daughter has some bruising.  Is it from wrestling, or tumbling down the stairs in a fight with her brother? No matter, because pretty soon the father and mother are being accused of child abuse because the father admits to scolding his children with light slaps across the bottom and on their hands. (Something that would be legal in the U.K..) He admits to not realising that this is illegal and frowned upon in Norway.  He says he is sorry - he just wants his kids back.  We see the civil court case play out, and his case is taken up by Christian right social media.

So many questions arise from this.  Why did the lovely progressive liberal teachers not bother investigating the fact that the headmaster's daughter Noora is slitting her wrists but jump into action when the immigrant girl has bruising?  Are they angry at the potential child abuse OR because the daughter Elia has the temerity to say that she doesn't agree that kids can be gay.  How far does the state have the right to intervene in how parents parent their children?  When is a light slap physical abuse? Where is the line?  How far is progressive liberal Norway really welcoming of immigrants? Or do they just want people to conform? Does freedom of religion really exist if you have to conform to views on LGBTQ?

I love that this film creates so much discussion and also that the director allows us to answer those questions for ourselves. It's a film that poses a problem of co-living and integration and allows us to try to answer it.  But Mungiu does put his hands on the scale in interesting and subtle ways.  The Norwegians subtly mispronouncing Elia's name.  The police case that is conducted in questionable ways.  The prosecuting lawyer resorting to Romanian idiom to make his case.  And going the other way, the fact that in the final very moving scene it becomes clear that Noora is gay.  

Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve are very strong in the lead roles of the two religious parents.  The cast in general is strong, and the cinematography stunning.  We get so many still frames and long scenes that when we get deliberate visual action it's all the more powerful. An avalanche comes down the mountain toward the small town.  And so over Europe more broadly.

FJORD has a running time of 2hrs 26m and is rated 15. It won the Palme D'Or at Cannes and also played Telluride and Toronto. It is on release in the USA and will be released in the UK on November 13th.

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 11

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is an absolutely fantastic film. It's hilarious, the action choreography is thrilling, it's genuinely moving, and it takes us into a world and a community few of us will know.  Writer-director Bassam Tariq (MOGUL MOWGLI) is really doing something as unique and authentic and purposeful as when Tarantino first came to our screens. 

The film is set in contemporary Houston, where community comes from religious groups.  Mahershala Ali plays a hitman called Latif, whose beloved wife has just died leaving him with three kids to take care of.  The fact that he got the call about his wife amidst murder clean-up AND the fact that his infant needs breast-milk become the twin MacGuffins that propel the action of the film. 

First off, because his boss Mike needed to clean-up the murder, Latif now owes him, and Mike wants him to pay that debt by assassinating an evangelical Christian cult-leader called Pastor Hwan (John Cho) that's going for Mike's nephew Hatty.  Second, Latif needs to find a nursing mother that can provide his hungry infant Zizi with food.  

All of which speaks to a gonzo cast of characters and a richness of world-building that echoes early Tarantino and comes complete with some rather sweet Mormons and a vibrant mosque community.  

What I love about this film is that it shows how the younger generations intermix and riff on each other's cultural language and tropes. It also dares to speak openly and honestly about faith, loss of faith, and balancing the desire to be pious with the desire to have a boyfriend or the need to provide for your kids. 

It was amazing to me how in one moment we would be laughing at Hatty's mogul stylings and then listening to him opine about his faith in moving terms. Or how we could see Latif's elder daughter Fatiha have to contend with being a mother stand-in and try to be pious, but then also be a normal teenage girl with a crush on Elder Wade.

I also loved how despite it's hilarious dialogue and exaggerated settings and crazy fight-scenes this was a movie that kept me guessing and laid some profundity on me in its final moments.  John Cho plays Pastor Hwan for laughs, as he should, but his character speaks to the profound issue of the rise of Christian nationalism.  And Latif is on a long journey of realising that while he can never replace the children's mother, he can be the best father he can.

So kudos to all involved. This is some of Ali's best stunt and acting work in a storied career. I would argue that it's a career best performance from John Cho.  But it's Adia as Fatiha who is the heart and soul of the film and most clearly shows how Tariq's script allows its characters a fully realised spectrum of emotions and responses.

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER is rated R and has a running time of 1hr 51m. It played Toronto and was released in the USA last month. It will be released in the UK on November 20th.

CLUB KID*** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 11

CLUB KID is the debut feature from writer-director-actor Jordan Firstman (I Love LA).  A gay club promoter, drug-dealer, addict the inevitable move-cliche "heart of gold" discovers he has a ten-year old kid and has to take over parenting when the kid's mum dies.  I really wanted to love this film. It has an authenticity rooted in the contemporary queer clubbing scene and Firstman writes and performs superb comedy.  Everyone is adorable.  But that's the problem.  Everyone is too adorable, the spikiness and darkness is tamped down, and the plot is as predictable and tropey as any of those films from GREEN CARD to KRAMER VS KRAMER.

First off, the dad, Peter, seems to be able to magically give up drugs despite having been a seriously heavy user for over a decade and still hanging out with users. We see one relapse. But no therapy, no NA, no AA, and he's just fine. We don't even really see withdrawal.  Then there's the kid, Arlo, who seems remarkably kind, sweet, open and undamaged despite the fact he grew up with a violent and abusive father, a drug-addict mother, and is still grieving. We don't see any of that in how he interacts with all the new people he meets or being around drug use.  Then there's the fact that Peter starts dating Arlo's psychiatrist (Diego Calva). We see enough of the psychiatrist to think he takes his job seriously and would not breach this boundary.

So this is a really funny, really heart-warming film that's beautifully shot and acted, but that is fatally flawed.  I just didn't believe any of it.  And it just felt super-cliched and sanitised and obvious in ways that I found problematic.

CLUB KID is rated R and has a running time of 2hrs 2m. It played Cannes, Telluride and Toronto. It opens in the USA on November 6th.

THE DEBUT** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Closing Night Gala

Writer-director Jesse Eisenberg (A REAL PAIN) returns to our screens with a mis-cast and beyond obvious musical comedy.  Julianne Moore stars as a bored housewife who, quelle surprise, finds community and self-confidence through her local theatre troupe.  So, so, so trite.  Her road to self-knowledge comes via Paul Giamatti's theatre director. In a tour-de-force scene, worth the price of admission alone, he forces her to really channel her character of the building janitor to the point that she turns from shy mouse into shouting desperate working-class woman.  The audience I watched this with burst into spontaneous applause. 

Unfortunately, that's the high point of the film. Thereafter, Eisenberg takes the character into increasingly laughable and absurdist territory, as she moves into a dodgy room-for-the-night roach motel as she completely inhabits her role.  We end up with a fright-wig and crazy make-up.  Not that an absurdist comedy couldn't have worked. But I don't think Julianne Moore is the woman for that role. Just imagine Lisa Kudrow in the part and weep for what could have been.  Overall, I am just surprised that after the layered, complicated depth of A REAL PAIN, this is where Eisenberg would choose to go next. It just feels so... slight.  

THE DEBUT is rated R and has a running time of 1hr 45m. It played Telluride and Toronto 2026. It opens in the USA on December 11th 2026 and in the UK on January 15th 2027.

ROSE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 9

Writer-director Markus Schleinzer’s ROSE is a beautifully-made historical drama that speaks to the contemporary debate around trans rights. It stars the ever-brilliant Sandra Hueller in the title role, playing a woman who has adopted the guise of a man in 17th century Germany. She does so not because she wants to be a man, but because wearing trousers gives her freedom. 

As the film opens, the soldier returns home from the brutal Thirty Years’ War to claim his inheritance - a small, broken-down rural farm. He turns it around and takes a wife Suzanna (Caro Braun), adding to his landholdings and his respectability. About halfway through, they come to an understanding. Both can achieve freedom and respectability from their arrangement. But the villagers cannot abide such deception and subversion. 

Schleinzer shoots the film in black and white and it is well done. I also loved the score and costuming. Caro Braun holds her own against Hueller in arguably the more demanding role. The film concludes exactly as one might expect and fear but the final moments made me gasp. I did chuckle at the idea that Rose had even been lying about her religion though. 

Overall it’s a beautiful film but very on the nose in its politics and predictable in its outcomes. It is elevated by Hueller but still feels rather slight.

ROSE has a running time of 1hr 34m. Sandra Hueller won the acting award at Berlin.  It goes on release in the USA on December 11th 

A LONG WINTER***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 9

Writer-director Andrew Haigh returns to the London Film Festival with another beautifully-made, deeply-felt film about grief, gay longing and addiction. This iteration, A LONG WINTER, is based on a novella written by Colm Toibin and set set in 1930s Spain. Haigh transposes it to 1950s rural Colorado. The film centres on a family of four. As it opens, the younger brother (Heartstoppers’ Kit Connor) is leaving for the Korean War just as his elder brother Mike (Fred Hechinger - GLADIATOR II) has returned home. Mike may be elder but he seems feckless and naive, shocked at his mother’s depression and alcoholism, and seemingly the last to know in the village. Indeed, once she walks out into the winter, it’s Mike who refuses to give up hope of finding her. He may be joined in his mountain walks by his Uncle Jack (Martin Freeman) but Jack at least knows it’s a forlorn mission. Meanwhile, father and son take in a drifter called Jimmy (Reservation Dogs’ D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) to fill the practical housekeeping role left by the mother. 

That I found the so-called protagonist Mike to be profoundly irritating did not harm my enjoyment of the film, because as much as it is marketed as Mike’s coming-of-age story it’s really about the parents. And here, The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe are outstanding and heartbreaking in beautifully-written many-layered roles. She plays the mother as a frustrated restless soul trapped in a rural home so far from the glamour and modernity of the magazines and music that she loves. He plays a father just trying his best - maybe harsh, maybe bigoted as many people of that time, but trying to keep the woman he loves safe and the sons he loves from knowing the full extent of their difficulties. 

The resulting film is a patient and heartbreaking exploration of grief and sorrow and frustration shot beautifully by cinematographer Andre Turpin. It’s a showcase for Moss-Bachrach who truly steals the film.

A LONG WINTER has a running time of 1hr 57m. It played Telluride and Toronto. It will be released in the UK and USA on January 17th 2027.