25 films by British directors to watch out for in 2026
Peaky Blinders on film, music movies and high-concept time-travel indies
Two of this year’s most-hyped films are from British film-makers: Christopher Nolan’s swords-and-sandals epic The Odyssey in July and Emerald Fennell’s new take on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in February.
If those are the only films you see in the cinema this year, fair enough. But, as many of us are realising, going to the cinema is fast becoming nothing short of a duty, in order to keep the doors open. Here’s our Brit picks for 2026.
Must-Watch Directors
- My Father’s Shadow - Akinola Davies Jr
My Father’s Shadow is an absolutely gorgeous film from first-time British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr, and his brother Wale Davies, who co-wrote the script. It’s a semi-autobiographical story set in and around Lagos in June 1993. Tensions are running high in the city as people wait to see if the military regime will accept a new democratically elected leader. But two boys, Akin and Remi, who are tagging around after their father, Fola, for the day, only grasp snatches of what’s going on - they’re wide-eyed at the food, the bikes, the music and, most curious of all, their dad’s assortment of friends and contacts around Lagos.
Davies deploys fluid, unshowy camerawork, all underscored by beautiful music from Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra. And Sope Dirisu (Gangs of London, Slow Horses) demands your full attention as Fola: for 90 minutes, he looks and feels like he’s carrying the whole world on his shoulders and trying his best to hide it from his children. A bold, personal and memorable debut, don’t miss it.
In cinemas 6th February.
- The Moment - Aidan Zamiri
Something quuuuiiiiiite different next, The Moment is the Charli xcx mockumentary about Brat Summer that no one asked for, but which could be genius. Directing (and co-writing with Charli and Bertie Brandes) is Aidan Zamiri. He made the music vids for the Charli mega-hit 360 and Guess with Billie Eilish, both of which are very fun if you like hectic, dead-eyed jiggling and pop stars rolling down mountains of underwear.
Zillennial mascot Rachel Sennott, who appeared in 360, brings her deadpan along too, which makes sense because the characters in Sennott’s fab little HBO influencer sitcom I Love LA are concerned to the extreme with creating “moments”. They’re joined by a stacked cast including Alexander Skarsgård, Patricia Arquette, Kate Berlant and Jamie Demetriou. Kylie Jenner is there. The question is whether the whole bit can hold through 1 hour 43 minutes. The slapstick trailer (which genuinely should come with a seizure warning) suggests maybe.
In cinemas 30th January.
- Normal - Ben Wheatley
Any film set in a quiet American town, which sees a sudden explosion of gunfire and violence, will hit differently in 2026 for obvious reasons. And yet it’s a popular mode for mainstream action-inclined film-makers, so we’re sure there will be a bunch on studio slates this year. Normal sees English auteur Ben Wheatley operating more on the Free Fire-end of his particular directing talents for this thriller. Bob Odenkirk plays temporary sheriff Ulysses, who arrives in a sleepy Minnesota town literally named Normal.
Plot-wise, it’s all bank robberies and underground criminal gangs, but we do have Henry Winkler as Mayor Kibner, which is fun. Scroll down for some weirder Wheatley this winter in the ‘hidden gems’ section.
In cinemas 16th April.
- Rose of Nevada - Mark Jenkin
Another auteur we’re keeping an eye on is the Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin, he of previous films Bait and Enys Men, who was, in fact, named a Cornish Bard on account of the art he’s made exploring Cornwall’s heritage. Rose of Nevada got glowing reviews out of the Venice Film Festival last year.
It appears to be a haunted, time-travelling ship story, at least from what we can gather without spoiling it for ourselves. George MacKay and Callum Turner play two men from a small fishing village - they find themselves mistaken for the original crew of the vessel, which was lost at sea 30 years ago. A must-watch.
In cinemas 24th April.
- Ink - Danny Boyle
OK, yes to this. Ink has all the makings of a future classic, and we feel like not enough people are talking about it. It’s the story of Rupert Murdoch buying The Sun in the late 60s and relaunching it as a rival to The Mirror, all with the help of the Daily Mail’s Northern editor, Larry Lamb.
It’s Danny Boyle directing and, we assume, working in his Steve Jobs (2015) mode. It’s based on a play by James Graham (Quiz, Punch), who we rate, and Graham’s adapting it for the film himself. Oh, and it’s Guy Pearce as Murdoch, Jack O’Connell as Lamb, plus Claire Foy is in the mix too as Jules Davies. No release date yet.
In cinemas TBC 2026.
- Rogue Trooper - Duncan Jones
The sole entry from our 2025 list, ha! But we really do think Duncan Jones’ long-awaited sci-fi animation based on the 2000 AD comic is coming soon. For the director of Moon we can wait. It stars Aneurin Barnard as the super soldier 19/ Rogue Trooper, who is the sole survivor of an invasion, aside from the personalities of three members of his squad, now living inside his helmet, gun and rucksack.
It has a very promising, very British supporting voice cast including Sean Bean, Jack Lowden and Hayley Atwell plus Matt Berry, Reece Shearsmith, and Jermaine Clement. Just top-tier comedy voices all round. Still no firm release date yet but we do have a little scooplet that makes us even more confident that Rogue Trooper is on the home straight: we spotted on Instagram that Rogue Trooper test screenings are happening this month at an Odeon in London. Well, well.
In cinemas TBC 2026.
Big Releases
- Cold Storage - Jonny Campbell
We have so, so many questions about Cold Storage from the trailer. OK, genius to set a goofy horror-thriller in a self-storage warehouse, but is it fungus zombies? Is that what we’re doing here? Does this mean Joe Keery is a movie star now? What’s Lesley Manville doing there? Why does Liam Neeson have a nuke in his trunk? Wait, David Koepp, the dude who wrote the first Jurassic Park, the first Mission Impossible and a bunch of good Soderbergh films, wrote this?
We think we’ll just have to go see this hunk of oozing silliness to get to the bottom of it. Self-storage employee Keery is joined by the horror-inclined English actress Georgina Campbell and the use of the song Bad Day in the teaser made us cackle. The director Jonny Campbell (no relation) has a lot of TV credits to his name - Doctor Who, Westworld - and, wonderfully, a 2006 sci-fi comedy named Alien Autopsy starring Ant and Dec. Wait, though, we might have to check that one out too.
In cinemas 6th February.
- Crime 101 - Bart Layton
Bart Layton is an English documentary maker who turned his hand to heist movies for 2018’s American Animals. Now he’s back with another in the form of Crime 101, which he’s written and directed. It’s LA, Chris Hemsworth is a jewel thief who meets Halle Berry, a fed-up insurance broker, so far so Hollywood.
The addition of Mark Ruffalo as a rumpled detective and Barry Keoghan as a chaos agent crim adds an extra soupçon of interest to proceedings, though, and the supporting cast is killer too. As for action, we’re talking car chases, we’re talking double dealings, hopefully we’re talking switcheroos. It’s a terrible name - the string of heists are all along the 101 highway or something - but otherwise, we’re here for it.
In cinemas 13th February.
- Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man - Tom Harper
“Whatever happened to Tommy Shelby, the famous gypsy gangster?” This is the question posed by the trailer for the new Peaky Blinders film, written by the show’s creator Steven Knight, who is currently busy writing the next Bond.
And it’s directed by Tom Harper, who has his own acclaimed TV and film CV including Wild Rose, War & Peace and three episodes of Peaky Blinders itself. Set in Birmingham in 1940, with Shelby returning from exile, expect big-budget polish and Cillian Murphy in fine form.
In cinemas 6th March, on Netflix 20th March
- Finding Emily - Alicia McDonald
This is an honest-to-god Working Title rom-com that shows some promise. It’s written by Rachel Hirons, whose A Guide To Second Date Sex in 2019 was awkwardly sweet and it’s directed by Alicia Macdonald, who has done a bunch of TV including the ‘Enough, Actually’ episode of Lena Dunham’s recent Netflix series Too Much.
Finding Emily is set in the UK, in and around a university and the Cinderella-like premise is this: a musician is given the wrong number for his ‘dream girl’ and sets out to find her, with the help of a psychology student, leading - we imagine - to trope-y shenanigans. Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn and Minnie Driver star.
In cinemas 22nd May.
- Sense and Sensibility - Georgia Oakley
We’re getting two big new Jane Austen adaptations this year, P&P on Netflix and S&S on the big screen. Now, it’s hard to compete with Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon, Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars, Emma Thompson as Elinor and Kate Winslet as Marianne as per the gorgeous mid-nineties Ang Lee film. But compete Georgia Oakley must.
She directed the excellent 80s-set Blue Jean back in 2022, so she may just do her own thing entirely. (Just please no Austen heroines listening to Mozart in their bedroom with a bottle of wine, IYKYK). Her cast here: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Frank Dillane, George MacKay and Herbert Nordrum. Intriguing.
In cinemas 25th September.
Indie Gems
- Bulk - Ben Wheatley
You’ll have to be quick to catch this gem in cinemas as director Ben Wheatley is currently touring indie arthouses around the UK with it for the next few weeks. Yes, this is the weird Wheatley we spoke of. It’s a lo-fi, goofball slice of black-and-white science fiction that’s concerned with string theory and multiple dimensions.
Bulk is helmed by Sam Riley as ‘our hero’ Corley Harlan who must try to enter a townhouse-funhouse to find an over-ambitious scientist, Anton Chambers. Good to see Noah Taylor having fun here, and actress Alexandra Maria Lara as Harlan’s guide Aclima. As the trailer instructs, unexpect the expected.
On tour of UK cinemas 15th January until 1st February
- Giant - Rowan Athale
Rowan Athale’s take on Prince Naseem Hamed is mostly a by-numbers boxing biopic, focusing on Naz’s rollercoaster relationship with his Irish manager, Brendan Ingle, played by Pierce Brosnan.
The matches themselves, whether in shabby local joints in Sheffield or the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, are choreographed and directed wonderfully, though, with Athale keeping the audience on its toes throughout. Amir El-Masry, as the fighter himself, is just a joy to watch and genuinely funny. He’s got the fighter’s swagger down, the fancy footwork, the wounded puppy eyes, the steely determination.
- H Is For Hawk - Philippa Lowthorpe
Brace, brace, we can just tell H Is For Hawk is going to be weepy. Based on author and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s much-loved, prize-winning 2014 memoir, the film features Claire Foy as Helen, a university research fellow.
Helen decides that in order to honour their father, photojournalist and falconer Alistair Macdonald (Brendan Gleeson), after his sudden death of a heart attack, she will buy and train a young goshawk. As for crew, H Is For Hawk is directed by Philippa Lowthorpe (The Crown, Three Girls), who co-wrote the screenplay with Emma Donoghue (Room, The Wonder), and Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s cinematography got a nomination nod at the BIFA Awards last November.
In cinemas 23rd January.
- Hamlet - Aneil Karia
Riz Ahmed does Hamlet. (In a gritty version mixing the original Shakespearean dialogue with a contemporary London setting from Oscar-winning short film, music video and TV director Aneil Karia). But, again, Riz Ahmed does Hamlet.
In cinemas 6th February.
- Wasteman - Cal McMau
The debut feature film from London director Cal McMau, this is a pressure cooker prison drama with a lot of promise. Wasteman looks to be mostly a two-hander between cellmates Taylor - Industry and Rye Lane’s David Jonsson - and Dee, an almost unrecognisable Tom Blyth, who you might know from The Hunger Games and Benediction. Taylor needs to lay low in order to secure an early release from his sentence but the violent, chaotic Dee might cause too much trouble. Can’t wait.
In cinemas 20th February.
![MIDWINTER BREAK - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters February 20 - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FeD_KEGIU_Q/maxresdefault.jpg)
- Midwinter Break - Polly Findlay
Midwinter Break is based on the book by Northern Irish author Bernard MacLaverty and follows a couple, Gerry and Stella, who take a trip to Amsterdam and find themselves talking and talking about the past.
Polly Findlay is a veteran theatre director, who has lead RSC and National Theatre productions, so we’re interested to see what she does with this intimate, character-driven story. Especially because the big draw here is seeing acting beasts Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville pouring their hearts out on the screen.
In cinemas 20th February.
- Surviving Earth - Thea Gajic
Director Thea Gajic graduates from shorts to a full-length film with Surviving Earth, a Bristol-set drama that follows a refugee named Vlad (Slavko Sobin) and his daughter Maria as they look for a new community. Based on a true story and set in the 1990s, Vlad has fled the conflict in his native Yugoslavia.
He’s working as a drugs counsellor and playing the harmonica in a Balkan music band that he’s formed with friends from work when past traumas surface from their previous life. The film has been on the road at the festivals, getting buzz at Cannes in 2024 and SXSW and Edinburgh Film Festival in 2025 ahead of its release this spring.
In cinemas Spring 2026.
- The Incomer - Louis Paxton
Louis Paxton’s The Incomer is part of a group of debut British films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off on 22nd January this month in Park City and Salt Lake City. The Incomer is a comedy set on - one of our all-time favourite things - a remote Scottish island. It stars Domhnall Gleeson as Daniel, an official from the mainland who has come to relocate a pair of oddball siblings, Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke).
But first, he must learn the local folklore and take part in an initiation ritual. Paxton is an award-winning Scottish writer and director of comedy and horror shorts who’s originally from Edinburgh. This one might just fill the Ballad of Wallis Island slot for 2026.
In cinemas TBC
- ISH - Imran Perretta
A BFI London Film Festival title that’s due to be released this spring, ISH is the directing debut of artist Imran Perretta, who is based in London and has exhibited at galleries like Somerset House and Manchester’s HOME.
It’s shot in black and white, with a score composed by Perretta. Co-written by Enda James and with cinematography by Jermaine Canute Edwards, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw says it’s a “poignant and poetic urban pastoral”. The story, which takes place in Luton, concerns two British South Asian and British Palestinian teen boys and the ramifications when they are racially profiled and targeted by police for stop-and-search.
In cinemas TBC.
- Extra Geography - Molly Manners
BAFTA-winning TV director Molly Manners, who directed four episodes of Netflix’s rom-dram series One Day, is taking her debut film Extra Geography to Sundance Film Festival. It’s a coming-of-age movie based on a short story by the novelist Rose Tremain, set in an English boarding school.
Two girls Minna and Flic, played by newcomers Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan, set out to fall in love with the first person they see. In this case, that happens to be their geography teacher. Can’t beat a good teen friendship flick.
In cinemas TBC.
Documentaries
- Broken English - Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth
Broken English is an art film and feminist thesis mixed with a Marianne Faithfull documentary. If you don’t know her stuff, you know her husky voice, and the footage of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Rolling Stones, beat poet Alan Ginsberg, et al is ace. But that’s not all: Tilda Swinton, George MacKay (him again) and Zawe Ashton are playing fictional researchers in a near-future ‘Ministry of Not Forgetting’. One thing we can say is we’re pretty sure there is not one conventional talking head shot in the whole thing. Whether the musician/ singer/ actor/self-described dilettante needed all the extra hijinks around her is another question.
Faithfull herself is interviewed here as part of the doc, and one of the most moving sequences is what would become her last performance before she died, with her fans and collaborators Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The likes of Beth Orton, Courtney Love and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore also pay tribute with really nice renditions of her songs too. Very moving when it gets out of its own way.
In cinemas 20th March.
- D Is For Distance - Chris Petit, Emma Matthews
Chris Petit and Emma Matthews’ D Is For Distance could turn out to be one of the more important British documentaries this year. They’ve created an experimental essay/montage film about their son Louis, his teen struggles with childhood epilepsy and the family’s battle with the NHS to get him the medical cannabis needed to stop his seizures.
It also looks to be partly a road movie as Chris and Louis, who lost some childhood memories as a result of the seizures but who are now aged 22 and flourishing as artists and musicians, travel to Finland to look for filming locations and make new family memories.
In cinemas 3rd April.
- One to One: John & Yoko - Kevin Macdonald
Just when we think we’ve consumed all there is to consume about The Beatles - and there’s a lot - out comes another book or film or doc about the band and we get the itch again.
One to One comes from Scottish director Kevin Macdonald, known for Whitney and Touching The Void. He focuses on the period in the early 70s when Lennon and Ono were living in Greenwich Village, using a Madison Square Garden benefit concert in 1972 as the centrepiece. Plus, Macdonald got Sean Ono Lennon on board to master the audio of the concert footage.
In cinemas 9th April.
- Super Nature - Ed Sayers
This debut doc from the London-based commercial and music video director Ed Sayers, and exec produced by Asif Kapadia, could be something special. It’s made up of Super 8 footage of nature, animals and landscapes from contributors in 25 countries around the world - a collaboration that was chosen intentionally in order to limit the environmental impact in making the film.
Super Nature premiered at the BFI London Film Festival last year and features segments captured in the Indian Ocean, the Grenadines and Sápmi, the northern European home region of the Sámi people.
In cinemas summer 2026.
- The Disciple - Joanna Natasegara
The last of the trio of British debuts heading to Sundance this January is Joanna Natasegara’s Wu-Tang Clan documentary The Disciple. Well, we say Wu-Tang Clan documentary, her primary subject is actually a Dutch Moroccan superfan, rapper and producer named Cilvaringz, who managed to hustle his way into the group’s inner circle.
He was also one of the forces behind the making of the world’s most mythical, unique album, the 31-track Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Only one copy will ever legally exist. It was originally sold for $2 million, and it’s currently owned by PleasrDAO, a sort of NFT and crypto art collective who are auctioning it off in five-second sampler increments. Wild, wild, wild. Natasegara has produced award-winning short films like The White Helmets and Nai Nai & Wài Pó, and she’s also working on a documentary about Gisele Pelicot for HBO.
In cinemas TBC.
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