THE OUTRUN 15

The Outrun is a superb depiction of addiction and recovery, starring Saoirse Ronan. Living the high life in London, Rona realises things need to change. After a spell in rehab she returns home to Orkney, where she meets old friends and family and has to face some difficult truths. The scenery and the sea in Orkney are a big part of the atmosphere of the film, but this is no bucolic ideal. The life people create and the communities they develop in the face of an unforgiving environment is a key element of the story.

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt and adapted by Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot from Liptrot’s own 2017 memoir of the same title, The Outrun is also co-produced by Saoirse Ronan. An excellent supporting cast includes Stephen Dillane and Saskia Reeves as Rona’s parents.

The Outrun received a series of outstanding reviews, and the BFI’s Sight and Sound magazine wrote: “The Outrun has a defiant, angular power – and, in Ronan, the right actor to convey it. Flinty and frail in equal measure, her gaze as fixed as her hair is changeable, she’s equally disarming as the intractable party girl determined, countless drinks deep, to make her problems everyone else’s – and, in the cold light of sobriety, as the wary, watchful recluse seeking a break from herself altogether.”