Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #30. Andrew Haigh’s Strangers

Strangers

After a detour in television, Weekend (2011) and 45 Year (2015) filmmaker returns to cinema with Strangers – a film Andrew Haigh directed in the United Kingdom in June of last year with what counts as a return to queer cinema with the book-to-film project that lassoed the likes of Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell (here is a set pic). A Searchlight project, this was produced by Blueprint’s Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin along with Sarah Harvey. We like the entire package of this sci-fi project.

Gist: Loosely based on an award-winning novel by Taichi Yamada, this follows screenwriter Adam (Scott) who, one night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, has a chance encounter with his mysterious neighbor Harry (Mescal) that punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As Adam and Harry get closer, Adam is pulled back to his childhood home where he discovers that his long-dead parents (Foy and Bell) are both living and look the same age as the day they died over 30 years ago.

Release Date/Prediction: We’d love to see Haigh become a Palme d’Or candidate, but this feels like an autumn film and we’re thinking this might be invited to the Venice competition instead – this is where he premiered Lean on Pete in 2017. Toronto is a contender as well.