I don’t normally make news posts like this, but God is it ever worth it here. Disney+ has just announced that Andrew Haigh’s sensational, beautiful, and haunting All of Us Strangers will be streaming exclusively on the platform starting this Wednesday (20th March). The six-time BAFTA nominee and seven-time British Independent Film Awards winner was, without a doubt, my favourite film of 2023 and arguably the best thing that everybody involved has ever done. Inexplicably, Searchlight Pictures – the indie/arthouse arm of Disney who handled the theatrical release – are not giving the film a physical media release of any kind, meaning that streaming is the only way to watch it and it risks falling into the content mines due to being overshadowed by the platform’s bigger additions. (Hello, Taylor.) Hence, this post. You need to watch All of Us Strangers next week.
For those who don’t already know, the film follows Andrew Scott as a depressed screenwriter living in a newly-built yet conspicuously empty London tower block. Around the same time that he meets and falls for the building’s only other resident, Paul Mescal, he also starts making visits to the ghosts of his parents, Claire Foy & Jamie Bell, who died when he was a child.
Unsurprisingly, this thing is a major tearjerker. Likely to destroy you if you’ve lost a parent or dealt with the trauma of being a closeted queer in a not-wholly supportive environment. But it’s also a cathartic, healing life-affirmer. Haigh’s poetic imagery and empathetic verse have never been better, and this also doubles as a culmination to his storied career to date; the longing of Weekend, the cross-generational queer conversations of Looking, and the aching ghost story of 45 Years. You’ll be incapable of listening to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “The Power of Love” without sobbing ever again.
I really cannot say enough things about this wonderful movie, although doing so would involve me getting really personal and detailed, so let’s just end the unpaid-advertisement here. You can watch the trailer below.
All of Us Strangers streams exclusively on Disney+ from 20th March.
Callie Petch is doing this for the thrill of it, killing it. You can read more of their work over at callumpetch.com.
