A Long Winter review: Fred Hechinger fronts a beautiful, unmissable queer drama

There's a unique heartbreak to realizing our parents aren't who we imagined.

A Long Winter is about that agony, and how one might grow from it.

From English writer/director Andrew Haigh ( Weekend, All of Us Strangers ) A Long Winter centers on a quietly queer protagonist, who comes to understand himself and what he wants through the hard, cold lesson of who his parents really are.

And the result is elegant in its heartbreak.

SEE ALSO: TIFF 2026 preview: 18 films (and shows) you'll want to see (and how) What is A Long Winter About? Fred Hechinger and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in "A Long Winter." Credit: TIFF Adapted from Colm Tóibín's short story of the same name, A Long Winter is set in the brutally cold mountains of Colorado, during the early 1950s.

There, despite the hard work of maintaining the house and farm animals, Mike ( Fear Street ' s Fred Hechinger) enjoys a rather blissful existence, relishing the time with his younger brother ( Heartstopper 's Kit Connor ), his mother ( Outlander 's Caitríona Balfe), and father ( The Bear 's Ebon Moss-Bachrach ).

However, once his brother takes a job far away, Mike witnesses another side of his parents, one tarnished by regret and recrimination.

As another winter approaches, his mother Louise's smiles turn to snarls.

Her empty water glass reeks of alcohol, and her fury at her hard-headed husband Lester boils over.

One day, she wanders off with their dog Sandy.

Hours later, a blizzard turns the familiar hills to treacherous, frigid white.

Where did she go? Could she have survived? Featured Video For You Andrew Garfield on the meaning of 'no kings' in 'The Uprising' For months, Mike will seek her out in the not-so-near town, an abandoned mine, the home of his posh uncle (a terrifically festering Martin Freeman), and again and again in the long, blank expanse of the mountain.

In his search, he has time and space to reflect, and so comes across a better understanding of who his mother was, who his father is, and what he wants for his own life.

Mike also makes a new acquaintance in Jimmy ( Reservation Dogs ' D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), an abandoned teen Lester brings on to do the "women's work" on the property that neither he nor his son has any talent for.