Petrolheads (2026)
Petrolheads, Emil Langballe's documentary, is a film I connected with far more than I ended up admiring it, and I want to be honest about both halves of that. It is a warm, tender portrait of a man you cannot help but root for, but as a piece of documentary filmmaking it is fairly basic, and in the end I have landed on three stars. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival.
It follows two friends, Martin and Casper, though the real focus falls on Martin, the director's own younger brother, a man living with autism, ADHD and a good deal more besides. He has spent time in psychiatric hospitals, he is a recovering cocaine addict, and his one great, pure dream is simply to own a 1994 Honda Civic. That modest ambition, a decent lad just wanting his car, becomes the thread the whole film hangs on, and there is something quietly heartbreaking in how much it comes to mean.
I will be upfront that this one landed personally for me. My own son has autism, and watching Martin move through the world, the frustrations, the flashes of joy, the longing to be seen as just an ordinary bloke with an ordinary want, I felt a real connection to him and found myself willing things to go right for him with an almost protective fierceness. The film is at its best simply as an act of love, Langballe turning his camera on his brother with obvious tenderness, and it is genuinely touching to be let so far into Martin's life.
The trouble is that, as cinema, it is not doing a great deal beyond that. It is shot in a plain, handheld observational style that rarely rises above the functional, and it leans almost entirely on the inherent likeability of its subject to carry it. There is little in the way of shape, craft or narrative drive to pull you through, and for stretches, endearing as Martin is, I found my attention drifting in a way a more artfully made documentary would not have allowed. The material is rich, but the filmmaking around it feels thin.
Three stars. Petrolheads is a sincere, affectionate and often moving portrait of a man worth spending time with, and for anyone with a personal link to the world it depicts it will carry a real charge. I just wish the craft had matched the warmth, because a more engaging, more shaped film could have done fuller justice to a subject as lovable as Martin. As it is, it is the man, far more than the movie, that stayed with me.
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