The Outrun

Rona (Saoirse Ronan) has returned, back to the barren landscape of the Orkney Islands where she grew up. This is no joyful homecoming though, but more of an escape, a need to flee her shattered life in London and start picking up the pieces. She moves back in with her mother Annie (Saskia Reeves) and helps her father Andrew (Stephen Dillane) with the sheep; separated, their lives are hardly straightforward either. A healing process begins for Rona, although it’s constantly blown off course by the unexpected, all-enveloping intrusions from her past, jagged recollections of alcohol-fuelled nights in the big city, of effortless highs and crushing lows, of a progressive loss of control that soon become an inexorable downward spiral. The wind howls, the birds shriek and the waves pound the rocks—can their own restless swirl bring about a change? Powered by a typically unflinching performance by Saoirse Ronan, Nora Fingscheidt’s wonderfully intuitive adaptation of Amy Liptrop’s memoirs takes the German director (SYSTEMSPRENGER) to new territories and to a new sense of scale while retaining her desire to approach troubled figures with suitable empathy. Even constant ups and downs eventually form a direction. (James Lattimer)

In the presence of Stephan Bechinger (editor). 

Nora Fingscheidt: SYNKOPE (2010, K), ZWISCHEN DEN ZEILEN (2011, K), BRÜDERLEIN (2013), BOULEVARD’S END (2014, K), DIE LIZENZ (2016, K), OHNE DIESE WELT (2017), SYSTEMSPRENGER (2019)