Rome Film Fest 2026: I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (dir. Clio Barnard) | Review
Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is an engaging, emotionally resonant portrait of young British life, against the changing landscape of Birmingham.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is Clio Barnard’s first feature in five years, premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2026. Adapted by playwright Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard‘s novel of the same name, it follows five friends from Birmingham who grew up together and are now reaching the end of their twenties. The good times are tinged with the suspicion that the party is over, and a crisis is gathering both within the group and from the political and economic pressures painfully familiar to anyone coming of age today.
As someone in their late twenties who lived in Birmingham for years, this film was particularly close to home – the characters, the accents, the music, the cityscape – which all felt very far away from the sunny Rome Film Fest screening I attended! I am often hesistant about contemporary films concerning today’s youth, worried that they will be too on the nose, but much like Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, I See Buildings doesn’t feel at all mannered, instead presenting an accurate and emotive portrait of what it is to be young and British in 2026.
The quintet of performances includes Joe Cole as Rian, who’s online trading windfall has bought him entry to the London life – the only one to have made it ‘out’. Daryl McCormack is Conor, a hard-working expectant father with a new building firm, while Lola Petticrew plays Shiv, whose partner Anthony Boyle‘s Patrick works a gig-economy job. Jay Lycurgo is Oli, the goofy stoner whose arc is perhaps the most unexpectedly moving.
The demolition of Birmingham’s brutalist tower blocks symbolises the film’s central preoccupation with the ways in which late stage capitalism has been systematically dismantling society through precarious work, unaffordable homes and the ever widening wealth gap. There are echoes of Andrea Arnold, Ken Loach, and Shane Meadows, although for me it didn’t pack quite the same punch as say Arnold’s work on similar themes in similar settings. Still, it’s a wonderfully engaging watch – plus an extra star for all The Streets songs in the soundtrack!
The 21st edition of the Rome Film Fest is running from October 13th to 25th, 2026.
