Longlisted - 2025 Observer / Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism.

Recovery drama can be a predictable place, following protagonists into the wastelands of addiction down roads potholed with cliches that can trip up any filmmaker. But The Outrun, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024, is less like a welcome breath of fresh air, and rather a gale-force wind. Flitting between Scotland’s Orkney Islands and London, this tender yet brutal masterpiece, directed by Nora Fingscheidt (The Unforgivable, System Crasher) and adapted from Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir, is a two-hour-long swell of cinematic magic that will leave you a decidedly reinvigorated person.

We follow Rona, a woman in her late twenties battling with alcoholism. Like the uncultivated grassland bordering her family’s mainland farm - after which the film is named - she is an outlier. Orkney born and bred, her English parents mean that Rona will never be a true islander, whereas London is an enticing but ultimately harmful honeypot of booze-fuelled bacchanals that only accelerate her downfall. These two extremes are bridged by artful transitions from editor Stephen Bechinger, as mesmeric underwater scenes merge into strobe-lit warehouses. 

Rona sees Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan on peak ethereal form - a captivating whirlwind of technicolour spindrift caught in the squall of addiction. Simultaneously tempestuous in nail-biting self-destructive moments and heart-breakingly childlike, Ronan, as the film’s co-producer, deliberately minimised Rona’s dialogue to let her physicality speak volumes.

We join Rona on the slow trudge to soberdom from the initially warm hues of Hackney to Orkney and finally Papa Westray, where she tunes into the tiny remote island’s raw beauty through her self-banishment. Slowly, she discovers interchangeable intoxicants; the euphoria of coming up matched by plunging beneath the Atlantic surf or the pulse of a nightclub sensed within a Neolithic stone circle. Throughout, we watch our mercurial maestra trying to harmonise her internal energy with wild external elements by conducting the weather with her arms, cresting in a euphoric crescendo. 

“Orkney’s underlying tremors resound in the fissures between those caught in its orbit…”

Elsewhere, Orkney’s underlying tremors resound in the fissures between those caught in its orbit. While some are bastions of calm - such as Rona’s long-suffering boyfriend Daynin in a heartfelt performance from Paapa Essiedu - these lighthouses are lost in rough seas to those who are outwardly stormy, like Rona and her father Andrew. Played by a brilliant Stephen Dillane, the latter vacillates between manic highs and a masterfully vacant thousand-mile stare in a stark portrait of bipolar disorder. Rona, Andrew, and her born-again Christian mother Annie (the fantastic Saskia Reeves) are like drifting islands in an archipelago of their own, separated by seas of mental illness, religion, and addiction. 

Tactfully avoiding a patronising success story, Fingscheidt’s non-linear narrative ferries us between past and present on turbulent waters, reflected by Yunus Roy Imer’s restless cinematography. Like the occasionally regressive trajectory of recovery, we alternate between present-day and flashbacks, stumbling down dark rabbit holes of memory into blurred drunken scenes clouded by hangover amnesia. These layers are interwoven with experimental scrapbook-like montages where Ronan narrates poetically on subjects ranging from how alcohol rewires your neural pathways to Orcadian folklore - as if we are the wayward child being read a bedtime story. 

Rona’s spectrum of hair dye is a vibrant waymarker throughout this ambitious structure - a beacon lighting the way from the de-icer blue days of hedonism to an empowered flame-haired siren. Elsewhere, the film is littered with metaphor-rich symbols like a flotsam-strewn shore; a lost compass, the elusive corncrake Rona searches for while volunteering with the RSPB, and the haunting seals that call to her, luring our land-lost selkie back to her true realm. 

“the film is littered with metaphor-rich symbols like a flotsam-strewn shore; a lost compass, the elusive corncrake Rona searches for while volunteering with the RSPB, and the haunting seals that call to her, luring our land-lost selkie back to her true realm…” 

Accompanying this compelling screenplay is a score of elemental force, with music composed by Jan Miserre and John Gürtler. The boom of Atlantic breakers and the fierce techno thud from Rona’s headphones give the film an electric energy that binds us to her. Meanwhile, real-life locations used during filming on Orkney strengthen a powerfully convincing portrait, including the farmhouse where Liptrot grew up and her father’s wind-battered caravan. This, combined with Fingscheidt’s documentarian sensitivity and her collaboration with Liptrot in writing the screenplay suggest a safety and respect for the story that can be felt on screen. Such foundational trust allows Ronan to plumb new depths of vulnerability with undoubting realness  - whether she’s slinging a dead newborn lamb into a bucket or howling like a banshee while cupping spilt red wine with her hands.

As a beautifully adaptated memoir, a distinctly female energy contributes to The Outrun’s undeniable magic. ‘Rona’ encapsulates this idea - a reminder that recovery is rarely accomplished alone. As an anagram of both Nora and Ronan, and a Scottish island honouring Liptrot’s roots, the name was chosen as an amalgamation of this cinematic sisterhood. The final shot follows Rona down a straight road leaving Papa Westray; a long stretch behind her, but an equally long one ahead. 

View this year’s full longlist and read the shortlisted entries here.