{"id":853413,"date":"2026-08-10T21:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T21:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853413\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T21:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T21:50:11","slug":"why-andrew-haigh-calls-his-new-film-my-version-of-the-revenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853413\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Andrew Haigh Calls His New Film \u201cMy Version of \u2018The Revenant\u2019\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFollowing the release of his latest film, All of Us Strangers<\/a>, Andrew Haigh<\/a> found himself presented with options like never before. The British director, previously best known for gay cult faves like his breakout feature Weekend and HBO\u2019s Looking<\/a>, met widespread critical acclaim for the wrenching queer drama starring Andrew Scott<\/a>, leading to his first BAFTA nominations for best screenplay and directing. It became his highest-grossing movie ever at the box office, pushing past $20 million globally. The opportunity to scale up, beyond the intimate character studies with which he\u2019d made his name, couldn\u2019t be ignored.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you have a thing that breaks through a little bit, you have to take advantage of it. It does make you take a lot more meetings afterwards, with lots of people sending you things \u2014 which is both good and then slightly exhausting,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cPart of me was like, \u2018Should I go bigger? I could now go and do this thing over here that\u2019s big and shiny and might get me more visibility.\u2019 But I don\u2019t necessarily need lots of visibility. The slightly more success you get, the harder it becomes to make those choices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so Haigh looked inward. He did not go bigger. Instead, he turned toward the project he\u2019d been trying to make for nearly 20 years \u2014 as tender, nuanced and subtle as anything in his oeuvre. A Long Winter feels, first and foremost, like an Andrew Haigh film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow 53, Haigh first read Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s short story \u201cA Long Winter\u201d right around its 2006 publication, before he\u2019d helmed a single movie. The tale follows 20-something Miquel, who lives with his father in a remote snowy village. His brother has just left on military service and his mother has suddenly walked out on the family. Miquel desperately searches for her in the freezing conditions, plumbing new depths of self-discovery in the process.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWithin that story was everything I wanted to make films about \u2014 I remember reading it and thinking, \u2018This is the perfect manifestation of what I care about,\u2019\u201d Haigh says. This was roughly two decades ago. Then an aspiring filmmaker, Haigh convinced the prize-winning Irish author to grant him the rights to \u201cA Long Winter.\u201d As he built his career, he tried to make the movie, over and over \u2014 initially working off of a script set in Spain, as the original text was. \u201cNo one wanted to make it,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cI made it harder because I can\u2019t speak Spanish and yet I was saying, \u2018I want to shoot it in Spain.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFred Hechinger<\/a> in \u2018A Long Winter.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so the moment finally arrived, in the wake of Strangers\u2019 lauded run and with a revamped adaptation. Haigh\u2019s ultimate film of A Long Winter is slated to screen at the Toronto and New York film festivals before hitting theaters via MUBI later this year. It\u2019s set deep in the Rockies of \u201850s Colorado, with young Mike (Fred Hechinger) navigating a complex relationship with his lonely father, Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach<\/a>), after his brother (Kit Connor) leaves for Korea and his mother (Caitr\u00edona Balfe) disappears, running away from a life she\u2019d found unbearably isolating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you look at all of the movies I\u2019ve made, there are these themes bubbling under: longing and trying to deal with loss and trying to understand who you are in the world and how to fit into the world that doesn\u2019t make sense to you,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cThose themes are very inherent in the story, but told in a [similar] way to what I\u2019ve always tried to do with my filmmaking: Excavate the complicated emotions beneath the surface and find a way to get them onto the screen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a visually ambitious film for Haigh, the haunting elements of Strangers extending to this rich family portrait. \u201cIt\u2019s not a big movie, but we had big ambitions,\u201d the director says. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely moving away from the more naturalistic, realistic base that some of my earlier work lived in and finding this more metaphorical place.\u201d As he\u2019s committed to doing lately, Haigh shot on film \u2014 \u201cThere was no debate about that,\u201d he says \u2014 and worked with D.P. Andr\u00e9 Turpin to execute a more subjective cinematic style.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe camera follows the awakening of Mike. If you look at the film, it\u2019s a lot more static at the beginning and it starts to breathe,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cThe camera starts to open up. It starts to move independently. It starts to move without a character leading it across the frame. To me, the film was about breathing differently. It was about opening your eyes differently.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA Long Winter shot up in Canada, a little over an hour outside of Calgary \u2014 Colorado was \u201ctoo expensive,\u201d Haigh concedes \u2014 and you can feel the intensity of the elements. The family home was an original construction in the woods, overseen by production designer Emmanuel Fr\u00e9chette, following an extensive location scout. \u201cI can stand in the kitchen window and I can look out and see the mountains \u2014 they\u2019re above me, they\u2019re below me,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cIt\u2019s still there now six months later, somewhere on the mountainside, surviving the extremes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe built that house up on the mountain, inside and out, no studio work, all up in 100-mile-hour winds and the snow,\u201d Haigh continues. \u201cIt\u2019s where they shot The Revenant, actually. So this is my version of The Revenant \u2014 a slightly more delicate version.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCaitr\u00edona Balfe and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in \u2018A Long Winter.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tHaigh has been working with his casting director Carmen Cuba for well over a decade, going back to Looking. For the past several years, Cuba has been telling him to cast Hechinger in something. \u201cSince seeing him in The White Lotus\u2019s first season \u2014 from that day onward it\u2019s been, \u2018You\u2019ve got to work with Fred,\u2019\u201d Haigh says. \u201cShe adores him, and I understand why. She sees him as a young, Dustin Hoffman-type of actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral actors put themselves on tape for the part of Mike, and Hechinger won the lead role. His moving, intricate performance serves as a showcase of what he can do as a lead, following auspicious supporting turns in films like Thelma and Nickel Boys. \u201cIf you watch him at the beginning of the film and see him at the end, he even looks like a different person,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cIt\u2019s not an easy performance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the consistent hallmark of Haigh\u2019s work \u2014 the landscape for his characters to grow and change feels immense, even as the script hews to the tighter conventions of real life. Mike begins the film feeling relatively comfortable in the family\u2019s isolated cabin bubble, if only because what lies beyond it feels so alien. His contentment is rocked by his mother\u2019s absence \u2014 her yearning for something better. He must now look his devastated father in the eye each morning, seeing all of his pain and resentments and fears. He must consider what led his mother to risk her death to find something different for herself. And he must confront what he himself wants \u2014 particularly when a mysterious young man (Reservation Dogs\u2019 D\u2019Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) begins living with the family to help out around the house.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs in T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s story, Mike is queer \u2014 but Haigh, known for his vividly realistic sex scenes from Weekend through to Strangers, communicates this onscreen with a surprising, impressionistic approach.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat I love about Mike, and especially how Fred plays him, is he\u2019s this sensitive soul within this world that isn\u2019t sensitive \u2014 his sexuality for me is wrapped up in a different way of feeling about the world and seeing the world,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cHe needs someone to understand how he sees the world. I\u2019ve put sex in a lot of the films that I\u2019ve done, and I wanted this to be different. Sometimes queerness is framed only within sexual desire and not within something else. But obviously when you are queer, you know that it\u2019s not just about sexual desire itself. It\u2019s more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHechinger in \u2018A Long Winter.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tIn these subtle but intent pushes, Haigh arrived at what felt like the ending of a chapter in his life and career. \u201cI think of this film as a bookend to a lot of things I\u2019ve been exploring over the last 15 years of making films,\u201d he says. \u201cAs I\u2019ve grown up and my life has changed \u2014 all of these stories that have been me trying to understand my own background, my life, my childhood, absences in my own life and certain losses \u2014 I\u2019ve come to terms with a lot. So I feel like this is an endpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for what his next chapter might look like? Haigh politely demurs with a laugh: \u201cWell, let\u2019s see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJust don\u2019t expect his next era to go the way of tentpoles and blockbusters. Haigh can claim the rare feat of making modestly budgeted, emotionally driven, critically hailed dramas at a steady clip for the entirety of his career \u2014 during which time the very future of independent film has been put under existential threat. It has never been easy for Haigh to get his movies made. But this moment, he concedes, feels different \u2014 scarier than ever.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is a very, very challenging time, and everything is much more expensive. Making a film is so much more expensive than it used to be,\u201d he says. \u201cMy first movie, I made it for $65,000. 45 Years<\/a> was only $1.5 million. You couldn\u2019t make that film now for $1.5 million \u2014 it would cost so much more. When I speak to younger filmmakers, it\u2019s a terrible situation for them. It\u2019s even harder for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet: \u201cI\u2019m quite happy existing within this budget range. I like to tell these stories. I like to have control of how I tell my stories,\u201d Haigh says. \u201cI can\u2019t be someone else. I can\u2019t make films like other people. I can only make films like I can make them. And so when I tell myself I never want to do this again because it\u2019s too difficult, I remind myself of that. It\u2019s a pretty incredible thing that I\u2019ve been able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStay tuned for more\u00a0exclusive<\/a>\u00a0features on this fall\u2019s biggest festival-bound films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the release of his latest film, All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh found himself presented with options…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[296777,296778,296779,70084,49,12574,48,13489,75,282,59560,19854,337],"class_list":["post-853413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-45-years","tag-all-of-us-strangers","tag-andrew-haigh","tag-andrew-scott","tag-ca","tag-caitriona-balfe","tag-canada","tag-ebon-moss-bachrach","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-fred-hechinger","tag-looking","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}