Aftersun (2022)

Aftersun is a quietly powerful, intimate drama about memory, parenthood, and the distance between who we think someone is and who they really are. Told as a present-day woman, Sophie, looking back on a summer holiday with her young father twenty years earlier, the film drifts between warm, sunlit vacation moments and the aching gaps of recollection. Paul Mescal and newcomer Frankie Corio give understated, lived-in performances that make small gestures and conversations feel unbearably honest. Watching Aftersun, you’ll experience a film that favors mood and detail over plot: the flicker of home-video footage, long observational takes, and a gentle soundscape build a sense of intimacy and loss. It’s nostalgic and tender one moment, quietly devastating the next, as the story slowly reveals the private melancholy beneath everyday joy. The movie asks the viewer to inhabit memory itself — unreliable, fragmented, and full of imagination — so expect to come away reflective, emotionally moved, and unsettled in the most humane way. If you like contemplative, character-driven cinema that trusts subtlety and small truths, Aftersun is likely to linger with you long after the credits.

Actors: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall

Director: Charlotte Wells

Runtime: 96 min

Genre: Drama

95 /100 7.6 /10 8.6 /10