Scott Tinkham & Michael Woloson’s feature debut fills me with the best kind of nostalgia. Before the most destructive vote in British political history, independent British cinema was in a far healthier place, to the extent that it felt like there was a genuine breakthrough of a new creative voice every few months. We don’t really get that anymore — just one promising movie before the system whisks them off to America to be subsumed into the anonymous, amorphous, and increasingly irrelevant blob known as Hollywood. Littermates is a reminder of the talent and vision still present in the indie space, and it fills me with optimism — both for their careers and for the fact that the talent is still out there.
Littermates has something of the Yorgos Lanthimos about it, only far more subdued and British. We open with a trio — Chester (Oliver Woolf), Liam (Joey Bader) and Mel (Kaylee McGregor) — all wearing gas masks, with the latter two posing for the most awkward photo imaginable, technically smiling, if you can call it that. We then rewind to find Liam in a bloody daze, wandering through the picturesque British countryside. It’s here that Chester discovers him, whisking him off in his chopper to a lavish but otherwise vacant manor house to give him the help he needs. Later, a government video informs us that there’s a war on, and the enemy are dropping bombs that wipe the memory and personality of anyone caught in the blast radius, turning them into adult‑sized children. Chester teaches Liam how to speak again, shields him from the outside world, and provides for his needs through a reward system that includes little coins called Nifty’s with gifts like “Karaoke”, “Headphone Song”, “Hot‑tub” and, “Forest Adventure”. All goes well until Mel arrives, and is put through the same routine — only she has a little more wanderlust than Liam, who’s perfectly satisfied with the nifty system. Around the halfway mark, the nameless war creeps closer to the trio and shifts the dynamic entirely, taking the movie out into the sparse English countryside.
The sheer absurdity is a delight, especially with things kept mostly clean.
LITTERMATES HAD ITS NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE AT DANCES WITH FILMS LA 2026, FOR MORE ON THE FILM AND EVENT CLICK THE POSTER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
Like a lot of British comedy on the more subdued end of the spectrum, the humour here is subtle and drenched in irony — the central pillar of which is the idea that Liam and Mel are fully grown adults behaving like children (ten‑year‑olds at a push). The sheer absurdity is a delight, especially with things kept mostly clean. Steering clear of the depravity the Greek new waver leaned into on similar material shows just how shrewd a writer Scott Tinkham is. Much of the humour and subtext comes through bickering and a masterful application of facial expressions from Bader and MacGregor. The peak of it comes in the Karaoke scenes, where the level of self‑deprecation Bader and McGregor engage in is deliciously funny. Whether stern and protective or with a mind compromised by biological warfare, they are all excellent — Oliver Woolf too, whose turn is just as impressive, albeit much more physical in its demands.
Comedy‑drama is a blunt simplification of what Tinkham & Woloson have done here. Sure, that’s the primary lane Littermates belongs to, but it ignores the war informing all of this. Dating back to — and beyond — the 1940s, there’s a rich vein of British cinema and media that uses the premise of war on the British mainland for a multitude of reasons, and here it’s a little hard to pin down, even if impressively minimal. While the minimalism never overstretches itself or becomes a rod for the movie to punish itself with, it does leave some questions wide open. Who are we at war with, and what caused it to be so serious that such invasive biological warfare has been employed? Thankfully, these aren’t questions the movie answers, as the war the script is truly concerned with is an interpersonal one — a sibling rivalry allowed to go unchecked. Still, the ambiguity of what caused this background scenario to occur is fascinating to ponder and gives the movie more inherent life than if it had dropped a “captain exposition” character into the third act. The most climactic thing we get in that stretch is a landmine with a devilish sense of timing. There’s also a sense that the movie’s worldbuilding is more intriguing than fully realised, leaving a few threads feeling more gestured at than explored.
Playing at Los Angeles’s Dances with Films and already a Jury Prize winner at Manchester Film Festival, there are clearly others who share the sentiment of my opening statement. Small, impressively ambiguous, and carried by three nuanced performances — all while being scored with a dreaminess and whimsy by Noa Margalit that’s echoed in Woloson’s airy, spare cinematography — Littermates is proof that British indie cinema doesn’t need household names slumming it with minute budgets. There is a pipeline of inventive talent primed and ready to escape. It’s not flawless, but its ambition and personality make the rough edges one of my highlights of the 2026 festival season so far.
LITTERMATES HAD ITS NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE AT DANCES WITH FILMS 2026
ROB’S ARCHIVE – LITTERMATES (2026)
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