Film Review

The Outrun (2024) • London Film Festival — Saoirse Ronan mesmerises in raw adaptation of a memoir about alcoholism

After living life on the edge in London, a young woman attempts to come to terms with her troubled past by returning to the Scottish islands where she grew up.

The life of Rona (Saoirse Ronan), a young Orkney-born woman and postgraduate student in London, has been overtaken by alcohol abuse. Told through a series of non-linear fragments, The Outrun follows Rona as she picks herself up from the lowest point of her life.

After rehab and in her late-twenties, Rona agrees to return home to Orkney and help her father on his farm. She soon gets a job with an ornithological preservation society helping to track an endangered bird species and puts all her focus on the wild landscape of the Scottish islands.

At home, with her deeply religious mother (Saskia Reeves), she’s miserable and unsure where to put all her feelings. Although she’s away from all the temptations of London, being with her…