With System Sprenger, Nora Fingscheidt delivered one of the best German films of recent years in 2019 and left the press and audiences around the world with their mouths open. Since then, the German director has risen to the international art house ranks. After directing the Netflix thriller The Unforgivable with Sandra Bullock in the lead role three years ago, she brings in her latest work The Outrun a no less internationally sought-after cast in front of the camera.
Saoirse Ronan, who we got to know and love in films like In My Heaven and Lady Bird, can once again dye her hair and search for meaning in the film adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoirs. Greatly played, she takes us on a journey emotional recovery journey a young woman on the brink of addiction.
Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun: Out of addiction, into the provinces
Rona (Ronan), who grew up on the Scottish Oakney Islands, is in her late 20s and lives an exciting life as a biology student in London, where she goes from one party to the next and spends time with friends and love interests. But Rona is accompanied by a problem that is increasingly making its way to the surface: the young woman is an alcoholic, which eventually destroyed their everyday life and their relationships.
After withdrawal, Rona flees back to her homeland to recover away from temptation. Back in the remote Scottish province, however, she is confronted with completely different problems that she has been able to suppress for years. Slowly but surely she examines the background of her addiction and also deals with her relationship with her parents. But after all this time, can the young woman find peace with her past, present and future?
Watch a trailer for The Outrun here:
The Outrun – Trailer (German) HD
The Outrun is an atmospheric battle with the past
When Saoirse Ronan stands on the cliffs of the Oakney Islands and watches the waves smash against the sharp rocks, you can almost feel the icy wind on your face, which is sometimes blue, sometimes blue, on the Lady Bird star orange and blonde hair sweeps. You can also feel it Emptiness and lonelinesswho surround this remote place that hardly more than a few hundred people call home.
Flashbacks repeatedly tell us what a contrast this place represents to Rona’s everyday life in London breaking through the green-grey-blue landscape of Scotland like a fever dream and initially give us the illusion of freedom, only to slowly turn into terror and imprisonment. The sound of the sea gives way to booming techno sounds, which slowly but surely transform into screams and despair.
Rona’s journey is anything but easy as she tries to come to terms with her past, which cost her many relationships, not only in London. She also lives through it her past on the Oakney Islands again, who significantly shaped the young woman’s life in her childhood and confront her again in the form of her parents.
Nora Fingscheidt always brings us very close to her main character and allows Saoirse Ronan to show emotions that often only bubble under the surface in Rona. The system-buster director proves once again that she is one A knack for character studies whose puzzle pieces slowly come together and are repeatedly released in powerful moments.
Rona always finds that as heartbreaking and depressing as some of these repeated moments can be Traces of happiness in the nature of this unlikely place and its always helpful and community-loving residents. An unexpectedly comradely conversation with an equally dry shopkeeper pierces the silence and resonates even through the deepest emptiness of the following scenes.
At the end is The Outrun a decision and celebration of every single daywhich has to be contested and lived through again and again. Rarely has a film captured that as well as this one. However, when you let a duo like Fingscheidt and Ronan get to work, it’s hardly surprising.
The Outrun has been in cinemas since December 5, 2025.