A Long Winter

A Long Winter, based on the short story of the same name by author Colm Tóibín and director Andrew Haigh’s follow up to festival 2023 London Film Festival favourite All of Us Strangers, is a visually stunning examination of loneliness, grief and masculinity set on the fringes of 1950s America.

The film opens on an isolated farmstead deep in the Colorado Rockies of North America in 1951, and the audience is introduced to the United States of America in a transitional period. At the very beginnings of the Korean War, the nation conversely is getting used to the finer things: colour television sets, shiny cars, fine clothes and a neatly packaged idea of suburban America sold by weekly issues of Cosmopolitan. The Rocky mountains however are at a standstill with the local mines being shut for business leaving a now unemployed workforce, resisted by the ostracised yet determined farmstead owner Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and with townsfolk leaving for the war or for Denver, Chicago or New York City – it’s clear the dream of the old America is coming to an end. The film follows Mike (Fred Hechinger), the oldest of two brothers and son of Lester, a hardened man who has little favour within the local small-town community. Mike’s mother Louise (Caitríona Balfe), well-known to all but her eldest son as an alcoholic, runs the home in-between visits to the local bar and all the while dreaming of a life in the suburbs away from the mountain; and younger brother Tommy (Kit Connor), truly his mother’s son, shares this new American dream and leaves for the Korean War to pursue it leaving Mike, a young man who wishes for his mountain life to remain intact whilst repressing his own homosexuality, to his duties on the farmstead. When Louise goes missing on the mountain during a heavy storm, the lives of Mike and Lester are upended in their search for their missing family.

In all the horror of the events of A Long Winter, there is surprising warmth in the Rockies encapsulated by sumptuous cinematography from André Turpin, and stark directorial and editorial choices – Turpin’s lens lingers on small expressions, warm candlelights, and Haigh expertly utilises wide, landscape imagery which slowly crossfades to close profiles of his characters. With this, the filmmaker opts to depict life in the Rockies as not under the shadow of the mountain but brightened with its beautiful cotton white landscape, which is as vast as it is dangerous, but a land that remains a playground for its lead Mike as he explores the snowy mountainside in search of his mother or, more likely, her remains. With loss, there is also new found friendship in the form of Jimmy (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), a mixed-race boy who, with no family of his own that is willing to accept him, fills the void left by Louise and is hired to tend for the house, bringing forth new ambiguous feelings to Mike of companionship that teeter on, perhaps not entirely, unrequited desire between the pair.

Fred Hechinger delivers a beautifully understated performance as the dutiful Mike, expressing grief, love and unfulfilled yearning in equal measure as Mike begins to understand his idyllic life is not quite as simple as he believed it was; whilst Ebon Moss-Bachrach brings a career-best performance as the bullish but deeply caring father who fails to hide his emotions behind a thin veil of immature masculinity, whose dreams and its limits could not compete with the new age and rung a painful cost on those closest to him.

With outstanding performances throughout, Haigh’s feature excels in its quietest moments as a tale that’s contemplative, moving and full of love – A Long Winter is an outstanding cinematic achievement that’s shot with utmost precision on a rich 35mm film stock, elevated by an excellent score and directed with heartfelt clarity by Haigh in his most compelling outing yet.

Ronan Fawsitt

A Long Winter is released nationwide on 15^th January 2027.

Read more reviews from our London Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the London Film Festival website here.