Movies - Erupcja: Love, Silence, and the Shockwave Beneath Warsaw

By Mulder, 11 february 2026

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 4, 2025, within the Centrepiece section, Erupcja quickly stood apart thanks to its striking blend of narrative minimalism and quietly simmering tension, all carried within a sharply focused 71-minute runtime that feels refreshingly bold in today’s landscape of extended features. Directed, produced, shot, and edited by Pete Ohs, the film aligns with the evolving language of contemporary American independent cinema while discovering an unexpectedly evocative visual rhythm in Poland. Warsaw is not treated as a mere backdrop but as a living, breathing entity — melancholic yet vibrant — its textures and light subtly shaping the emotional undercurrents of the story. When the project was first announced in October 2024, curiosity was already high, fueled by the unusual creative constellation of Charli XCX, Lena Góra, Jeremy O. Harris, and Will Madden, whose involvement extended beyond acting into the screenplay itself. The five-way writing collaboration between Pete Ohs, Jeremy O. Harris, Charli XCX, Lena Góra, and Will Madden is rare enough to be noteworthy, and the result carries that distinctive sense of an organic, almost spontaneous narrative flow anchored by remarkable emotional precision.

At the center of the film is Nel, a young florist living in Warsaw, whose seemingly settled daily life is disrupted by the arrival of Bethany, a childhood friend visiting from the United Kingdom with a new boyfriend — precisely as a volcano erupts. What might initially appear as overt metaphor instead becomes a finely tuned dramatic catalyst. Erupcja refuses to frame catastrophe as spectacle; rather, the eruption functions as an invisible psychological pressure, intensifying silences, restrained gestures, and hesitant glances. Charli XCX and Lena Góra deliver performances marked by a delicate volatility, avoiding theatrical excess in favor of emotional nuance. Pete Ohs’ camera, often lingering close to faces, captures micro-shifts of feeling with near-documentary sensitivity. Meanwhile, Jeremy O. Harris and Will Madden, also co-screenwriters, add a tonal counterbalance that deepens the film’s fragile equilibrium between subtle humor, discomfort, and unspoken desire, creating that unsettling atmosphere where the audience senses that something could fracture at any moment.

The musical score by Isabella Summers and Charles Watson mirrors this tonal architecture with elegant restraint, favoring atmospheric textures and suspended breathing spaces over overt dramatic cues. The sound design becomes an essential component of the film’s paradoxical tension: nothing truly explodes on screen, and yet everything feels perpetually on the verge of rupture. Beneath its deceptively simple framework, the production — shepherded by Pete Ohs, Jeremy O. Harris, Josh Godfrey, Luke Arreguin, and Charli XCX — reveals a clear artistic ambition: to explore emotional eruption rather than geological disaster, using external threat as a lens through which internal tremors emerge. Principal photography in Poland lends the film a distinct visual identity that oscillates between urban naturalism and faint surreal unease, where ordinary spaces gradually transform into stages for intimate destabilization.

From a distribution standpoint, the film’s international trajectory reflects its growing momentum. North American rights were acquired by 1-2 Special, with a theatrical release scheduled for April 17, 2026, in the United States, while Vertigo Releasing will oversee distribution in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the second quarter of 2026. In France, the film is set for release on June 17, 2026, through UFO Distribution, a fitting home for a feature that fully embraces its independent DNA and unconventional tone. At a time when many films rely on scale and sensory overload to command attention, Erupcja makes the opposite wager: a compact format, a stripped-down narrative, and an emotional intensity that unfolds through observation rather than spectacle. A seemingly modest cinematic gesture — yet, like any true eruption, one whose resonance may prove unexpectedly enduring.

Synopsis : 
Nel is a young woman who leads a fulfilling life in Warsaw as a florist. But the arrival of her old British friend Bethany, visiting with her new boyfriend, reawakens a deep and complex connection between them that will disrupt her daily life.

Erupcja
Directed by Pete Ohs
Written by Pete Ohs, Jeremy O. Harrisn Charli XCXn Lena Góra, Will Madden
Produced by Pete Ohs, Jeremy O. Harris, Josh Godfrey, Luke Arreguin, Charli XCX
Starring  Charli XCX, Lena Góra, Jeremy O. Harris, Will Madden
Cinematography ; Pete Ohs
Edited by Pete Ohs
Music by Isabella Summers, Charles Watson
Production companies ; Spartan Media Acquisitions, bb²
Distributed by 1-2 Special (United States), UFO Distribution (France)
Release dates : September 4, 2025 (TIFF), April 17, 2026 (United States), June 17 2026 (France)
Running time : 71 minutes