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.