Here’s a little bonus review for you heading into the weekend, courtesy of Shelly and Strike Media. Child opens in U.K. cinemas 2 October.
Title: Child
Director: Cyrus Neshvad
Release Date: 02 October 2026 (Theatrical – United Kingdom)
Runtime: 1 hour 18 minutes
Greg (Malik Zidi), a doctor, is sitting bedside with his son, Leo, who is attached to all sorts of machines in a hospital. He tells his son that it’ll all be better soon, they’ll be back to building huts and things will be fine. As the father leaves, we see Leo is in what appears to be a basement of the hospital in a makeshift private suite.
Upstairs, the department head, who is also Greg’s brother-in-law, has a nurse lined up to watch over Leo while Greg is away. He hands Greg a form for his wife, Anne (Brigitte Urhausen), to fill out so Leo can have surgery. All this time, Greg’s been paying to get him to the top of the waiting list.
Anne and Greg embark on an awkwardly quiet drive out to a set of coordinates that leads to a medical center. However, after crossing a border and following the given coordinates, there is no medical center. There’s nothing but miles of train tracks and empty forest.
Greg quickly realizes there never was a medical center or a waiting list.
So what has all of his money been going to?
Once we realize where the money has been going, things move quickly. Greg learns that Anne and her brother knew all along what was going on behind the scenes. They kept it from Greg because, despite saying it, he’s not actually willing to do whatever it takes to save Leo. As Greg soon finds out, each choice that he and Anne are confronted with forces them to assess their moral compass.
To its credit, Child is certainly not your standard paint-by-numbers thriller. I have a massive amount of respect for Neshvad refusing to hold the audience’s hand and spell things out for them. He takes some bold swings in his first feature and connects more than he misses.
Clocking in at 78 minutes helps Child more than it hurts it. Once Greg and Anne are on the road, the tension ratchets up. Most of the film plays out over a single night, and the cinematography from Nikos Welter leans into the darkness, using the light to reveal just enough of what is in frame.
And, let’s be honest, this is a pretty bleak story. Stretching it out too much longer would risk losing the audience.
Child is a lean, unnerving debut, and I’m curious to see what Neshvad does next.