Rory Doherty looks ahead at some of the most exciting British films releasing in 2024.
It seems like each year brings an even more diverse and surprising range of British films – with 2023 serving up Rye Lane, How to Have Sex, and Chicken Run 2, it’s tough to imagine how 2024 can beat it. Here’s 10 films coming up that hope to continue UK cinema’s golden streak.
All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh’s brand of gentle, searching intimacy hasn’t felt this British and queer-specific since his breakout drama Weekend 12 years ago. Uniting two of the buzziest Irish actors—Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal—Haigh tells a story of haunted, burning longing that touches on generational gaps in the gay community, grief over never being seen by your parents, and crucially about how London is constantly trying to haunt you. Tissues and a stiff drink required afterwards.
Hoard
The female-directed British debut has almost become a brand over the last couple of years, so at least this BBC and BFI funded drama from newcomer Luna Carmoon has the courage to be weird, unhinged, and downright unpleasant at frequent moments. A teenage girl is picking up the knotty, misfit pieces of a childhood spent with a hoarder mother while in foster care, when an enigmatic and intoxicating older foster kid (played by Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn) throws her completely off-balance. It’s proved divisive at festivals—Hoard demands your attention.
The cast of Blitz
Blitz
Steve McQueen actually has two films coming out in 2024, and funnily enough both of them relate to WW2. His 4 hour-plus documentary Occupied City, detailing the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, also drops this year, but we’re eagerly awaiting his ensemble drama Blitz about the lives of Londoners seen during the German air raids. Expect dramatic rigour and terrific performances, not least from cast standouts Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, and Stephen Graham.
Wicked Little Letters
A blackly comic mystery about a real-life English scandal, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley unite in a seaside town to get to the bottom of obscene, anonymous letters causing unrest and distress in their small community. Expect lots of uppercrust performances and shocked English gasps—not to mention a look into how reputation is unfairly baked into British society.
Back To Black
The incredibly talented Amy Winehouse saw an incredible but brief success in the 2000s—her drug dependency was maliciously and cruelly mocked in the press and popular culture before her death in 2011. Directed by Fifty Shades of Grey’s Sam Taylor-Johnson and starring Industry’s Marisa Abela, this Winehouse biopic has been regarded with curious caution—will it avoid exploiting Winehouse’s stardom and trauma?
Paddington in Peru
Paul King may have departed the Paddington franchise to go to Wonkaville, but Britain’s favourite duffel-clad bear cub is back in 2024, helmed by six-time John Lewis ad director Dougal Wilson. It’s not going to be set in Britain though—Paddington will be heading home to meet up with Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman for more adorable, marmalade-soaked adventures.
Layla
After the dark, subversive depiction of drag in British thriller Femme, next year’s Layla promises a more romantic but hopefully just as thoughtful look at drag. Writer and drag performer Amrou Al-Kadhi directs a story about a queen’s search for love bringing them—wait for it—a marketing executive. The story of questioning identity crosses queerness with British Asian identity, and also stars drag performer Baby and singer-songwriter Self Esteem. We’ll know at the end of January how the film’s received, as it’s premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
The cast of Conclave
Conclave
After winning the Oscar for Best International Film, All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger is helming a religious thriller that casts Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, and Stanley Tucci all as cardinals discovering a secret repressed by a recently deceased pope. If that’s not enough to hook you, Isabella Rossellini plays a nun—fingers crossed there’s some high stakes Catholic scandal to chill us.
Hot Milk
Based on a best-selling novel by Deborah Levy, this dark, strange drama stars Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw as a mother and daughter trekking to the Spanish coast to find a cure for an indecipherable illness, where a new world soon opens up once the daughter realises she can escape her controlling mother. The film is the directorial debut for Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who as a screenwriter was responsible for female-centred dramas Disobedience, Colette, and She Said.
Timestalker
This heightened fantasia from writer/director/star Alice Lowe (Sightseers, Prevenge) hopes to be the most eclectic British comedy of the year—Agnes (Lowe) plays a hopeless romantic who gets reincarnated throughout history every time she mistakenly falls for the wrong man. It sounds like Orlando but silly, and packs a terrific ensemble of underrated British talent: Kate Dickie, Nick Frost, Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds, and Game of Thrones’ Jacob Anderson.
