Agnes (2026)
There is a particular pleasure in a short film that knows exactly what it is and gets on with it, and Leah Vlemmiks's Agnes is one of those. It is a slight thing, story-wise, but it is made and performed with such care that I came away warm on it regardless. A good short, if not quite a remarkable one. Three stars.
Agnes is an eleven-minute piece, a UK and Canada production that had its world premiere at Sundance, where it was the only British short selected, before travelling to the BFI London Film Festival. It follows Agnes, a woman in her seventies who lives perfectly happily by herself in a one-bedroom flat, and who is under quiet, steady pressure to give that up and move in with her daughter. Everyone around her has decided what she is: the daughter means well, the neighbour means well, but between them they keep gently filing Agnes into the box marked helpless old woman, a box she does not feel remotely ready to climb into.
What I liked is that the film understands the real sting here is not loneliness but condescension. The neighbour's friendliness is the sharpest thing in it, because kindness that assumes your decline is somehow harder to push back against than open unkindness would be. Agnes looks out of her window at young people spilling out of a nightclub, at all that noise and heat and life, and you feel the pull of it, the simple wish to still be part of something that makes you feel alive. So one night she goes, and she dances.
That moment is the whole film, really, and it is lovely. Eileen Davies carries it beautifully, giving Agnes a dignity and a flicker of mischief that never tips into the cute or the inspirational, and Clare Holman makes the daughter's concern feel real rather than villainous. Vlemmiks directs with a clean, unfussy eye and lets the performances do the work, which is the right call for material this intimate.
If it stops short of greatness, it is because it is very light on story. The premise is set up, the single turn arrives, and the film ends more or less there. It is good at precisely what it sets out to do, but it does not reach for much beyond that one well-chosen image of an older woman reclaiming a bit of her own aliveness. I wanted perhaps one more idea, one more complication, to push it from charming into unforgettable.
Three stars. Agnes is well made, well acted and quietly affecting, a short that earns its eleven minutes without overstaying them. It will not change your life, but it might make you think twice about the boxes we put people in, and it is absolutely worth catching if it crosses your path.
Agnes screens at the BFI London Film Festival.
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