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Saoirse Ronan is having a moment. Which is not necessarily a new experience, given she has four Oscar nominations to her credit. Now 30, the Irish-born actress first made the Academy cut at 14 for her supporting role in Atonement, which she followed with leading roles in Brooklyn, Ladybird and Little Women. But this year, playing a single mother in Steve McQueen’s London wartime drama Blitz, and a woman fighting her demons in Nora Fingscheidt’s addiction story The Outrun — Ronan’s first project as a producer — the goalposts for what she can achieve have been widened.

Deadline: At this stage of your career, when you’re thinking about what you want to do next, do you choose in terms of personal challenge or people you want to work with?

Saoirese Ronan: I would say it’s both of those things. It’s become more about the type of filmmakers I want to work with,...

San Francisco Film, which presents the San Francisco International Film Festival, has named Steve McQueen as the honoree for the 2024 Sf Honors Award for his latest film, “Blitz.” The Academy Award-winning filmmaker will receive the recognition in person during a pre-screening award presentation. After the screening, there will be an in-depth conversation with McQueen, who wrote and directed the film. The ceremony will take place on Dec. 3 at the Premier Theater at One Letterman in San Francisco.

“‘Blitz’ represents the pinnacle of bold, fearless filmmaking that Sf Honors celebrates,” said Sffilm Board President Todd Traina. “McQueen’s distinctive vision exemplifies why we created this award—to bring extraordinary cinema to San Francisco audiences.”

“We are elated to present the second Sf Honors Award of the season to the cinematic luminary, Steve McQueen for his most recent film ‘Blitz,’” said Jessie Fairbanks, Sffilm’s Director of Programming. “Steve’s artistry is...

New Movie Alert: The Best Flicks Hitting Each Streamer This Week From November 18-24 - Main Image

Here's to an all-new movie alert week! From November 18 to 24, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, and Max are releasing a number of premieres and docuseries for subscribers to enjoy at the start of a new week.

New Movies Hitting Netflix This Week

Netflix has a couple of new flicks hitting the streamer, but the upcoming docuseries, 900 Days Without Anabel, may be the most highly anticipated.

The docuseries focuses on the abduction of Anabel Segura, aka the longest kidnapping in Spanish history. Otherwise, Netflix also adds GTMax, The Piano Lesson, and Transmitzvah to their roster.

As for subscribers looking for kids and new romances, The Merry Gentlemen, Maybe Baby 2, and Spellbound may be right up your alley!

GTMax (2024) — November 20The Merry Gentlemen (2024) — November 20Maybe Baby 2 (2024) — November 21900 Days Without Anabel (2024) — November 22The Piano...

Saoirse Ronan entered the world of acting at a very young age and quickly became a fan favorite. After years of hard work and dedication to her craft, she has reached a new chapter in her life at 30. The talented Irish actress, who earned her first Oscar nomination at just 14 for Atonement, has gone on to star in acclaimed films like Brooklyn, Ladybird, and Little Women.

Saoirse Ronan on The Graham Norton Show | Credit: BBC

Married and looking to slow down, she had been hoping to enjoy some well-deserved downtime. However, the only thing that could have tempted her out of that break was an offer she simply couldn’t refuse and that was working with Steve McQueen. And that’s exactly what brought her back to the spotlight!

Saoirse Ronan Went On a Self-Imposed Semi-Retirement

Saoirse Ronan decided to step back and take a much-needed break from her demanding career.

Steve McQueen

The director of Blitz talks us through the choices he made to create his dreamlike love letter to wartime London

1 — Don’t look back

None of my films have been similar to any other film, from Occupied City to Hunger to Small Axe to Shame. I mean, they are all very, very, very different. And that’s not just because I want to be different, it’s because the subject matter asks for it to be like that. It’s all about subject matter, and then making work that can enhance what I want to talk about. With Blitz, I wanted to look through a child’s perspective. Like a Brothers Grimm fairytale, it’s very dark, but it’s almost like a dream — and I think that seeing these things through a child’s perspective is what gives it a dreamlike quality. Because I’m putting you...

Get The Full Scoop On The Saoirse Ronan-Led Historical Drama Blitz.. (Photo Credit – Instagram)

Blitz dropped a bomb at the BFI London Film Festival on October 9, 2024, and it was released in theaters on November 1, 2024. No worries if you haven’t watched it—it’ll hit Apple TV+ on November 22, 2024.

This one, directed by Steve McQueen, flips the script on your typical war flick. It’s all about the raw, emotional side of World War II, focusing on the real people who lived through the Blitz—not just the battlefields. And trust, it’s going to hit harder than a bombshell.

Blitz Plot Twist: A Kid’s Journey Through the Blitz

Blitz is about a kid’s wild journey through chaos. Set during the London Blitz, it follows 9-year-old George, who’s sent to the countryside by his mom, Rita (played by the excellent Saoirse Ronan), to escape the bombings.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen is revealing today that two years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a procedure to remove the tumor.

Thankfully, the filmmaker is now “fully recovered and fully functional,” he tells Deadline.

The knight of the British realm is making a speech this afternoon to U.K. lawmakers at the House Of Commons to launch a new campaign for charity Prostate Cancer Research.

The surgery meant that the start of filming on his exceptional wartime feature Blitz was delayed for two weeks.

McQueen then returned to work without divulging to over two hundred cast and crew the reason for his absence. The director says that he kept his medical operation secret because he didn’t want his health issues to be a distraction to those working on the movie.

Today’s date, November 14, has a special significance for the filmmaker, because it’s two...

Ahh November. You know it’s fall in Hollywood because the beaches empty out, the mountains light on fire, and people start to wear fashionable jackets that it’s entirely too warm for. But damn it, if we wish it hard enough, those leaves will change color and it will be perfect pumpkin-spice weather!

It is perfect movie weather though, and we have some hot ones for you this month. We have films from heavy hitters like Steve McQueen and Pablo Larraín, and some exciting sophomore features from the likes of Mati Diop and Jessie Eisenberg. Take a look what this month has to offer below:

Juror No. 2

When You Can Watch: Now

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (limited)

Creator/Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collete, J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland

Why We’re Excited: Recipient of the 2007 Spirit of Independent Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, director...

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run.

While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the essential films that may be on a screen near you.

All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)

Following up her enigmatic, beautiful debut A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal Kapadia shows an entirely different register with her dazzling Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize winner All We Imagine as Light. While India foolishly didn’t select it to compete in the international feature category at this year’s Academy Awards, hopefully it’ll take an Anatomy of a Fall-esque path this season. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Writer-director Payal Kapadia isn’t interested in the...

Blitz director Steve McQueen has dropped out of Poland’s Camerimage Film Festival following a controversial editorial about female cinematographers written by the festival’s founder and CEO Marek Żydowicz in the days before the opening of the 32nd edition of the industry event dedicated to the art of cinematography.

“Having read Marek Zydowicz’s op-ed concerning female cinematographers, I have decided not to attend the opening night presentation of my film Blitz this weekend,” the filmmaker said in an exclusive statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Although he has issued an apology, I cannot get past what I consider deeply offensive words. I have enormous respect for cinematographers of all genders including women, and believe we have to do and demand better to make room for everyone at the table.”

The event was scheduled to kick off on Saturday with a screening of McQueen’s latest feature, with the Oscar-winning director in attendance.

Steve McQueen will tell you the toughest part of making his new WW II period drama wasn’t the set pieces. It wasn’t the visual effects. It was finding “the love.” For the two-time Oscar winner, the most important part of “Blitz” was capturing the relationship between a young boy (Elliott Heffernan) and the mother (Saoirse Ronan) who sends him to the British countryside for his safety when the Nazis bombed London relentlessly during eight months beginning in 1940.

Continue reading Steve McQueen Reflects On The “Useful & Urgent’ Message Of ‘Blitz’ at The Playlist.

A filmmaker of unflinching bluntness in his depiction of historical, socio-cultural division and oppression, it’s a wonder that it’s taken Steve McQueen nearly 20 years to finally set his sights upon the many horrors—both political and interpersonal—of the Second World War. Perhaps it came from a reticence to tackle subject matter so massive in scope, or perhaps it was the desire to wait until he had the clout to demand a worthy budget, but regardless, “Blitz” comes at a critical moment in the career of an Oscar-winning filmmaker finally given the scale to approach a period of history that has long-fascinated him.

Of course, “Blitz” isn’t McQueen’s first go-around in depicting the dreaded six-year period of the early 1940s, as it was preceded by his gargantuan 2023 documentary “Occupied City,” adapting his partner Bianca Stigter’s pop-up book detailing the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Seeming to...

Director Steve McQueen could not have made his latest film “Blitz” without production designer Adam Stockhausen.

McQueen needed him to help tell the story of World War II London as it came under attack from the enemy. He wanted as much as possible to be done in camera, and Stockhausen was just the person to build sets, but also destroy them — and really destroy them.

The atmosphere was an important factor for McQueen, such as the minute details of capturing dust particles floating in the air following a night of heavy bombing or the dirty environment created by people burning coal. McQueen says, “He’s a storyteller first and foremost. A brick wall isn’t just a brick wall, there’s a story behind it. That’s what Adam brings to the table.”

The two are no strangers to working together. Stockhausen worked with McQueen on “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows.

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

As we enter the fall/holiday season, “Wicked” (Universal) and “Gladiator II” (Paramount) are gathering early buzz for the Best Sound Oscar. Other standouts include “Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), “Blitz” (Apple TV+), “Maria” (Netflix), and “Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios). Still to come are the highly anticipated “Nosferatu” (Focus Features) and “A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight Pictures). Another major contender, course, is “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.).

In “Wicked,” Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, we get the unlikely friendship between...

Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” (Apple TV+) is a tale of two Londons under harrowing German aerial assault during World War II. There’s the communal stiff-upper-lip resilience that defines the Brits and the more personal family drama, which centers on biracial youngster George (Elliott Heffernan), who’s hurled on an incredible “Oliver Twist”-like adventure. After being evacuated out of London on a train with other children for safekeeping, George immediately runs away and perilously heads back home to his munitions worker mom, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), and musical grandfather Gerald Hanway (Paul Weller of The Jam).

The convergence of these two perspectives in “Blitz” becomes the basis of a primal survival story told as social realist fable. It alternates between naturalism and surrealism, yet it’s completely anchored in historical truth. Among the real-life incidents depicted in the film: the East End air-raid shelter run by Mickey (“the Midget”) Davies...

A WWII drama with a buzzy cast might seem like typical generic awards fodder, but in the hands of a brilliant filmmaker like Steve McQueen, it can be so much more. McQueen’s Blitz is a technically masterful and narratively impressive film that uses the formula of its genre to create one of the most harrowingly beautiful movies of the year.

Blitz Review

Blitz follows a mother and son who must fight their way back to each other in WWII London during a terrifying period of air raids in the city. Although there have been plenty of films about trying to stay alive during the war, we less often see one set on the homefront, and in many ways, seeing the horrors of war against a backdrop that is supposed to be comfortable like home makes what we see all the more horrifying.

Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan in “Blitz,...

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.

November brings both the familiar and the new to screens big and small. A favorite novel gets a new adaptation. A bestselling detective series gets a TV series. A popular movie gets a spinoff in Gladiator II, and a beloved musical finally gets the theatrical treatment fans have waited years for in Wicked. But the month is also set to bring a sure-to-be twisty adaptation of an acclaimed novel and more.

While Hugh Grant horror Heretic has the widest opening, it is awards contenders dominating new releases at the UK and Ireland box office this weekend as Juror #2, Anora and Blitz make their way to cinemas.

Steve McQueen’s World War Two drama Blitzlaunches this weekend for Apple TV+ ahead of hitting the streamer later this month. Saoirse Ronan stars as a mother searching for her son, played by newcomer Elliott Heffernan, who runs away after being evacuated from London.

McQueen’s last fiction feature Widows opened in 573 sites back in 2018 with £1.6m. His biggest success at the box office remains...

For his film debut in “Blitz,” Elliott Heffernan had a tall order.

He had to perform in perilous scenes that found his character running through WWII battlefields as bombs dropped, leaping from a moving train and getting caught in a flash flood. But when the now 11-year-old actor faced his most challenging moment – having to cry on cue – he was able to use his greatest fears to pull it off. “I pretended my mom was taking away my PlayStation,” Heffernan reveals.

It worked; the young actor is earning raves for his turn in the Steve McQueen epic, playing George, the mixed-race son of Saorise Ronan’s single mother Rita. As WWII rages on and London endures an aerial bombardment, Rita makes the agonizing decision to send George away to safety in the country, despite his pleas. George ends up fleeing and, in his effort to return to his family, encounters a series of new threats.

There’s a scene early on in Steve McQueen’s Blitz in which Rita (Saoirse Ronan), a munitions-factory worker with a talent for singing, reluctantly packs off her young, mixed-race son George (Elliott Heffernan) to the countryside to avoid the horrors of continuous bombing. It’s a scenario we have seen a million times before — a tearful train-station goodbye — but McQueen makes it heart-rending. Over its two-hour running time, Blitz pulls off this trick constantly. Seen through McQueen’s vibrant but clear-eyed lens, it takes stock situations from countless creaky black-and-white films and makes them feel raw, real and fresh.

The story starts with the ferocity of D-Day: Saving Private Ryan transported to Stepney Green. In the aftermath of a night-time Luftwaffe bombing sortie, firefighters are struggling to contain a raging blaze (think battling Drogon with a couple of pails of water). At one point, a canvas hose escapes from a fireman’s clutches,...

Thanksgiving may promise a bounty on the dinner table, but the multiplex still looks bare. Continuing this year's theme, our November film preview features another relatively light month at the movies. Still, it’s quality over quantity, and if you ignore Red One, the $250 million attempt at turning Christmas lore into a Marvel movie,...

New Movie Alert: The Best Flicks Coming to Each Streamer This Week (October 28-November 3) - Main Image

As Halloween is fast approaching, here's your New Movie Alert guide for the best flicks hitting each streamer this week from October 28 to November 3!

Keep in mind that most of the streaming services will also soon be including more classic Christmas movies to celebrate and encourage the holiday spirit ahead of December.

New Movies Hitting Netflix This Week

From October 28 to November 3, Netflix's roster offers time traveling, romance, horror, drama, and a bunch of animation flicks kids can enjoy! For now, here are a couple of standouts worth binge-watching:

October 30-31Time Cut (2024)Martha (2024)Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024)

Time Cut tells the story of a teenage girl who travels back to stop a killer from murdering her sister.

Martha is a documentary flick about Martha Stewart's journey to becoming the US's "first self-made,...

When you purchase through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Apple TV+ entered into the streaming game pretty late but because of the quality of their originals, they are quickly becoming everybody’s favorite. After the success of shows like Ted Lasso and Slow Horses, the Apple-owned streaming service is showing no signs of slowing down and releases new brilliant TV shows and movies every month to expand its impressive content library. So, here are the best new movies and shows coming on Apple TV+ in November 2024.

Bad Sisters Season 2 (November 13)

Bad Sisters returns for its much anticipated Season 2 this November on Apple TV+. Created by Sharon Horgan, Dave Finkel, and Brett Baer, the Irish dark comedy-drama series is based on the Flemish TV series by Malin-Sarah Gozin. Season 2 is set two years after the events of Season 1 and it continues the story of the Garvey sisters,...

Apple TV+ has announced the programming that will be added to the streaming service next month. The Apple TV Plus November 2024 lineup includes Bad Sisters Season 2, the documentary Bread & Roses, the war drama Blitz, and Silo Season 2.

Apple TV+ offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment. It is available to watch across all of a user’s favorite screens.

Silo Season 2 Apple TV Plus November 2024 Schedule

Available November 1

Blitz (PG-13 War Drama Film)

Steve McQueen‘s “Blitz” follows the epic journey of George (Elliott Heffernan), a nine-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in East London, embarks on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.

"Everything about this film feels incredibly authentic. It's a true portrayal of London." Apple TV has just unveiled a behind-the-scenes featurette providing a quick look at Steve McQueen's latest - a WWII drama set in London called Blitz. Taking place during the bombings on London at the start of WWII, following a young boy lost in the city. This premiered at the 2024 London & NYFF Film Festivals and will be opening in November in theaters first before it's later on Apple TV to stream at home. Nice to see McQueen on set in some of this footage. A defiant young boy goes on an adventure running around London during the war only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son. Saoirse Ronan is Rita, with Elliott Heffernan as her 9-year-old son George. The full ensemble cast in this features Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine,...

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

This season, the Academy shortlist for Best Original Score has expanded from 15 to 20 titles, and now up to three composers will be allowed to receive the Oscar. In terms of the race, “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) was ruled ineligible because composer Hans Zimmer used more than the allotted 20 percent of the pre-existing themes and music from his Oscar-winning “Dune” score. However, Zimmer is still very much in the race with his score for “Blitz” (Apple TV+).

Other fall/holiday contenders include “Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), “Gladiator II” (Paramount...

In November 2024, Apple TV+ brings an exciting lineup featuring both returning favorites and compelling new narratives. Bad Sisters returns for its second season on November 13, delving deeper into the lives of the Garvey sisters as they grapple with the resurfacing truths surrounding Grace’s “accidental death.” On November 15, the gripping sci-fi drama Silo resumes its exploration of the last ten thousand people on Earth, with Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette, who unravels dark secrets hidden within their underground world.

The much-anticipated film Blitz, directed by Steve McQueen, premieres on November 22, following the poignant journey of 9-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) as he navigates World War II London in search of his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan). Also debuting on November 22 is Bread & Roses, a powerful documentary that highlights the struggles of Afghan women in the aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. This month promises to be filled with gripping stories and...

British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen is tired of being defined by other people. Since he broke out with 2008’s Irish prison drama “Hunger” — along with Michael Fassbender — each film has been completely different from the last. “Shame” (2011) was a provocative portrait of a sex addict (Fassbender), while Best Picture winner “12 Years a Slave” (2013) turned Lupita Nyong’o into an Oscar-winning star and grossed $187.7 million worldwide. “Widows” (2018) was a less successful foray into an American genre picture. And back in Britain, his 2020 “Small Axe” limited TV series and 2023 documentary “Occupied City” earned raves.

“I don’t even try to be in my own box,” he told IndieWire during a Los Angeles interview. “My mother always told me, ‘Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.’ Someone blow the dust off of cinema because I don’t want to be stuffy. I want it to be entertaining in a...

Saoirse Ronan is hard at work promoting her two awards season movies right now!

The Oscar-nominated actress stepped out with co-star Elliott Heffernan and director Steve McQueen at a screening of their Apple Original Films movie Blitz on Sunday (October 13) at Ross House in Los Angeles.

Blitz follows the “epic journey of George (Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald in East London, embarks on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.”

In a new interview, Saoirse talked about her desire to work with husband Jack Lowden again after meeting on the set of Mary Queen of Scots years ago.

Keep reading to find out more…

“Jack is a lot calmer than I am.

“In my part of the world, war hasn’t occurred for quite a while, so most of the time how we get our information about war is through the media,” writer-director Steve McQueen said at the 62nd New York Film Festival, where his new film “Blitz” was the closing night selection. Then, while researching his anthology “Small Axe,” he “came across this image of a boy, a Black child, standing on the railway station waiting to be taken away, evacuated … and I thought, who are you? I want to know more about you.” And he wanted to re-frame the experience of war by showing it through the eyes of a child. Watch McQueen’s discussion about the film above.

“Blitz” follows Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and George (Elliott Heffernan), a mother and son caught in London during the Blitz, the period in World War II when Germany enacted a brutal bombing campaign against the United Kingdom.

Beware the movie with Oscar hopes on its sleeve. It’s far better for a movie like last year’s “Saltburn” to grab reviews and audience reaction and proceed into the fall season than to declare its Oscar intentions at the start and then come up short. Festivals can give and take away. “Joker” came away from Venice 2019 with the Golden Lion, and went on to score over $1 billion worldwide and eleven Oscar nominations and two wins, including Best Actor Joaquin Phoenix. This time, Todd Phillips and his indulgent studio masters (who never previewed the film) had the chutzpah to go back to Venice with the $190-million musical prison/courtroom drama “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which launched a tsunami of bad press that sliced its opening weekend ($37.6 million domestic) to less than half of the original ($96.2 million domestic). “Joker 2” is heading downhill from there, with no Oscars in its sights.

Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.

After a short, overwhelming stint in the mobile Criterion Closet, which boasts over 1,200 titles in the order they were added to the collection, Screen Talk co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio welcomed Criterion president Peter Becker to the annual New York Film Festival edition of “Screen Talk” Live.

But first, the co-hosts debated the merits of Luca Guadagnino’s artful but long “Queer” starring Daniel Craig as an aging gay junkie suffering from unrequited love. And they also argued about the NYFF closing nighter, “Blitz,” which some think lacks that Steve McQueen edge. His biggest budget film to date is also his most traditional, starring Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan as a mother and son separated during the London blitz of World War II. Reviews are stronger in Britain than stateside so far (Metascore: 76). Anne thinks it will play for Academy voters,...

The English visual artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen directed a Best Picture-winning historical epic over a decade ago, and since then, he has—whether consciously or not—avoided taking the awards bait that might be expected to follow a triumph like 12 Years A Slave. He zig-zagged into a pulpy,...

With his new World War II drama Blitz, uncompromising filmmaker Steve McQueen is once more tackling weighty, vital material. He tells us about his ongoing mission to break new ground…

Here’s what you need to know about Steve McQueen, as a man and as a filmmaker: he will not waste your time. Not with false modesty, nor with empty boasting. Not by suffering fools or flattering royalty. This is sometimes mistaken for brusqueness. It isn’t. It’s a guarantee that when a single shot of a priest conversing with a prisoner lasts 17 minutes and 11 seconds (as in 2008 feature debut Hunger), or when his 2023 Holocaust documentary Occupied City takes four hours and 26 minutes (not including interval), every moment is necessary and accounted for.

It’s this disciplined focus on what McQueen emphatically calls “the work... The W-O-R-K” which has enabled the 54-year-old to frequently...

Will “Blitz” blitz the Oscar field? What will dominate below the line? Gold Derby editors and experts Christopher Rosen and Joyce Eng are here to discuss Steve McQueen‘s new film and share their below-the-line predictions.

Written and directed by McQueen, “Blitz” is the Oscar winner’s first film in six years. It kicked off the London Film Festival on Wednesday and will close the New York Film Festival on Thursday. Set in London during World War II as it came under attack by German air bombers, the drama follows 9-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan), who tries to find his way home after his mom, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), evacuates him to safety. There have been lofty expectations for “Blitz” since it was announced — it’s in seventh in the Best Picture odds, McQueen is in fifth place in Best Director and fourth place in Best Original Screenplay, and Ronan is in...

BFI CEO Ben Roberts and Working Title producer Tim Bevan praised the confirmation of the Independent Film Tax Credit (Iftc), at the opening night of the 68th BFI London Film Festival.

“It’s really brilliant news that this morning the government confirmed a game-changing new tax initiative to support British films, which will create so many opportunities for filmmaking and developing talent,” said Roberts in his opening address. “A strong and diverse film culture, including this film festival, needs all the support it can get.”

Roberts also welcomed Lisa Nandy, UK culture secretary under the new Labour government, who attended...

Saoirse Ronan is stepping out for the world premiere of her new movie!

The 30-year-old Oscar-nominated actress joined co-stars Elliott Heffernan and Harris Dickinson at the world premiere of Blitz held during the Opening Night Gala of the 2024 BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday (October 9) at The Royal Festival Hall in London, England.

Fellow cast members in attendance included Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Benjamin Clementine, Erin Kellyman, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, Cj Beckford, Alex Jennings, and Sally Messham.

Director and writer Steve McQueen was also at the premiere along with his wife Bianca Stigter, their daughter Alex, and their son Dexter.

Here’s the synopsis: “Sir Steve McQueen’s Blitz follows the epic journey of George (Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald (Weller) in East London,...

Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson and Steve McQueen have together ushered in the 2024 BFI London Film Festival.

With the world premiere of McQueen’s latest film Blitz opening the fest Wednesday night, fans flocked to the BFI’s Southbank Centre to catch a glimpse of the cast, led by Ronan.

The Academy Award nominee wore a form-fitting white dress with a detailed, silver-buckled belt, and coo-ed over her co-star, 11-year-old Elliott Heffernan, who was shown where and how to pose for the crowd of photographers shouting his name. Stephen Graham, Paul Weller and Benjamin Clementine were among the cast members present.

Shortly before the screening started, McQueen spoke highly of Heffernan and lauded the “stillness” casting directors saw in his tape that landed him the role. “I’m very grateful he exists,” the director said, before Ronan spoke about wanting to make his first film set as welcoming and “fun” as...

Oscar winner Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) hasn’t made a movie since “Widows” in 2018 so there was a lot of buzz about “Blitz” when it debuted at the London Film Festival on Oct. 9. This Apple Original Film is a period piece, set in 1940 war-torn London. George (Elliott Heffernan), a 9-year-old sent to safety in the countryside by his single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan), decides to return home. While his mother frantically searches for him, he gets caught up in a series of adventures.

While some critics were somewhat tepid about this heartwarming film, others were more enamored of its charms. Many reviewers singled out the contributions of the below-the-line talent. Combined, the reviews merit an impressive score of 94 at Rotten Tomatoes. Read a sampling of their thoughts below.

After closing the New York Film Festival on Oct. 10, it opens theatrically in both the US and UK on Nov.

Steve McQueen’s Blitz is the opening night film at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival, arriving with sky-high expectations. Written, produced, and directed by the award-winning filmmaker and artist, the World War II drama is set during the German air raids on London, with a cast led by Saoirse Ronan, Stephen Graham (The Irishman) and newcomer Elliott Heffernan. Blitz seeks to explore both personal and collective trauma during the London Blitz, but the end result oscillates between impactful moments and underwhelming narrative execution.

Blitz tells a story of survival, resilience, and the emotional ties between a mother and son amid wartime chaos. The film follows George (played by Heffernan), a young boy who embarks on a dangerous journey through London during the Nazi bombing campaign. Separated from his family and thrust into peril, George’s mother Rita (Ronan) launches a desperate search for her child. Alongside her, we meet characters...

London film festival

The director unexpectedly channels The Railway Children as Saoirse Ronan stars as the single mother whose son is evacuated, only to run away in a perilous bid to find her

Steve McQueen finds the key of C major for this well made and unashamedly old-fashioned wartime adventure, heartfelt and rousing and – yes – a bit trad overall, sometimes even channelling the spirit of Lionel Jeffries’s The Railway Children, although for me that’s no put-down.

This is a film about the blitz of 1940 which tries to restate the accepted imagery, the dramatic stock footage and familiar ideas but also absorb revisionist approaches – themselves increasingly accepted nowadays: it evokes the way that the British wartime authorities reverently invoked the loyalty of empire and Commonwealth but maintained a casually racist attitude to actual people of colour.

The cheerful obedience of the London East End working class was sentimentally taken...

Steve McQueen has long been upfront about his desire to make a musical; before Widows underwhelmed at the box office, it appeared likely that a passion project within that genre would be his next film. With each subsequent effort, it seems McQueen is slowly pushing himself into that wheelhouse, getting audiences to imagine what such a film in his distinctive style would look like––it’s similarly become apparent that it would be less reminiscent of the downbeat New York, New York sequence in Shame, more like the jukebox joys of his Small Axe entry Lovers Rock. For a filmmaker who was initially characterized as one obsessed with bleak character studies, he is increasingly finding an inner warmth through music, and in his large-scale WWII drama Blitz he utilizes the power of a communal sing-along in ways reminiscent of Terence Davies, cutting through the darkness with tunes wherever possible.

Music...

In London, late in 1940, the German bombs fall, erupting into an inferno of buildings gutted by glowing orange flame. People die right in their living rooms, seated in their armchairs. In the streets, the air-raid sirens scream as surging civilians surround a barricaded underground train station, trying to get the police to let them in. This is the desperate face of war. And yet…life goes on. Many of the buildings look like skeletons, but the shops and markets stay open, by day people walk the streets, and the swank patrons of a dance club party into the night…

As a filmmaker, the British director Steve McQueen might be one of the last old-school classicists. That’s not necessarily the first thing you think of when you see a McQueen film like “12 Years a Slave,” with its lacerating vision of human cruelty and resilience, or “Hunger,” about the Irish prison hero Bobby Sands.

Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” isn’t just a movie, it’s a lot of movie. It’s one of the most enormous cinematic experiences in recent memory. It’s a World War II epic with a stunning sense of scale. It’s an intimate family drama about meaningful relationships in crisis. It’s an intelligent recontextualization of a historical era that’s too often viewed through a single lens. It’s a Dickensian melodrama with outsized yet believable characters. It’s an Irwin Allen-esque disaster film with impeccable visual effects. It’s got great musical numbers. It’s funny. It’ll make you cry. I’ve been to whole film festivals with less cinema than Steve McQueen packs into just two hours.

“Blitz,” which had its world premiere at the London Film Festival, tells a story about a family trying to survive the Nazi bombing raids in the United Kingdom,...

Steve McQueen is back in the director’s chair for an alternately compelling and cliché-peppered WWII drama. Here’s our Blitz review.

It’s worth mentioning now that this isn’t 2011 “cop-killer versus killer-cop” Jason Statham vehicle of the same name, because these two films could hardly be more different. If video rentals were still around, we’d be seeing a lot of very confused fans from both camps.

Parts of Blitz (2024), though, are just as thrilling as watching the Stath run around after a London-based serial killer, if you can imagine such a thing. Using a conflicted mother (Saoirse Ronan)’s hunt for her runaway eight-year-old as a setup, McQueen’s latest is something of an anthology film disguised as a conventional A-to-b drama. On his travels, young George (Elliott Heffernan) encounters folk from across the capital’s social strata, from a kindly air raid warden (Benjamin Clementine) to...

Intricately detailed yet broad in its brushwork, Steve McQueen’s Blitz offers a densely packed vision of London at war in 1940, as seen through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy (discovery Elliott Heffernan), trying to make it home to his single mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan). Aptly enough, given the city where it’s set, the film is positively Dickensian in its tendency to heap misfortune on top of melodrama, though it offers relatively little of the sort of light comic relief that Charles Dickens also excelled at. But no one could quarrel with its timely message about how much ordinary folks suffer when bombs fall on civilian targets.

However, while there’s much to admire here — including some bravura sequences, top-notch craft contributions and a long-overdue effort to show that London was more racially diverse than you might guess from watching movies from the time or made later but set...

Steve McQueen said he prefers a collaborative style of filmmaking, saying that “being a director is not about being an arsehole”.

“Once you have a situation where everyone’s together – I’ll take a good idea from anybody,” said UK filmmaker McQueen, at a Screen Talk ahead of the world premiere of his new film Blitz, opening the 68th BFI London Film Festival this evening.

“A director is not about being an arsehole. A director is about listening and feeling and smelling and tasting…There are too many arseholes, trust me,” said the director, who did not name names.

This...

British artist-filmmaker Steve McQueen made history with his best picture win for 12 Years A Slave in 2014. But what does he remember from that night in the Dolby Theatre?

“I met Prince,” McQueen said jokingly this morning during an onstage screen talk at the London Film Festival where his latest feature length project Blitz debuts this evening. “He took his shades off and met my mum. It was Prince, man, oh my god.”

McQueen — who was questioned on stage by film critic Danny Leigh — continued to describe Oscars night in 2014 night as “heavy” before telling the London crowd that he’s proud of the film’s legacy. However, he told the audience that he’s certain the film would not have been made if Barack Obama wasn’t in office at the time.

“I know for a fact that if President Obama wasn’t in office that movie wouldn’t have been made.

Saoirse Ronan discussed the relevance of Steve McQueen’s WWII drama “Blitz” amid escalating global conflict during a BFI London Film Festival press conference, saying that it was her first time not being able to “escape” from a project.

“The thing that made this so real as a filming experience is that you’d shoot certain scenes where there’s total chaos and pandemonium and we’re having to portray characters in abject fear and horror, and then you would leave set and you’d turn on the radio and you’d hear exactly the same thing, and you’d put on the news and you’d see exactly the same thing,” she said. “It was the first time I’d ever had an experience on a project where there wasn’t really an escape from it.”

Ronan stars in the historical drama as Rita, a distraught mother who frantically...

Pedro Almodóvar (holding up a copy of Sigrid Nunez's What Are You Going Through) with Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore and John Turturro at The Room Next Door press conference

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Pedro Almodóvar is the recipient of the 50th Chaplin Award. Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through and Golden Lion winner at the Venice International Film Festival), starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton with John Turturro, Alex Høgh Andersen, and Alessandro Nivola, was the Centerpiece Gala selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival.

Pedro Almodóvar on Alice Tully Hall in The Room Next Door: “It was perfect to say we are in the heart of New York.” Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Nickel Boys, starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater,...