Rose of Nevada (dir. Mark Jenkin)

by Jack Martin | Apr 22, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 114 mins

UK Distributor: BFI

UK Release Date: 24 April 2026

WHO’S IN ROSE OF NEVADA?

George MacKay, Callum Turner, Rosalind Eleazar, Francis Magee, Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Mark Jenkin (director, writer, composer, cinematographer, editor), Denzil Monk (producer)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A pair of fishermen (MacKay and Turner) find themselves on a time-travelling boat…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON ROSE OF NEVADA?

It takes a village to make a movie, but for Mark Jenkin it’s a village of one. The Cornish filmmaker has become known for constructing films like Bait, Enys Men and now Rose of Nevada almost entirely by himself, capturing the initial footage on vintage 16mm Bolex cameras and then adding all the sound and dialogue during post-production. His work also sees him developing and processing each reel of film by hand, using everything from coffee granules to vitamin C powder to give his films that grainy, almost disintegrated visual look you’d usually find in old 60s or 70s-era home movies. And given how emphatically his resulting works have been received by critics and audiences alike, the laborious process seems entirely worth it.

But with Rose of Nevada, his third such film to be made through this method, Jenkin opts for a slightly more audience-friendly vibe while maintaining his signature aesthetic. This is his first film to feature more recognisable actors like George MacKay and Callum Turner rather than his regular band of local Cornish performers that often pop up in his movies (including this one, but strictly in supporting roles this time), and comparatively speaking the basic concept is more straightforward and genre-based than the abstract surrealist material he previously dabbled in. Luckily, his hand-made approach and thematic complexity remain, giving the film a powerful centre to go along with its strikingly unique filmmaking.

The film begins when a small fishing boat named Rose of Nevada suddenly reappears in the harbour of an economically devastated Cornish village, after being missing for thirty years along with two men on board. The boat’s unexplained return brings faint hope to the remaining villagers, and soon local family man Nick (MacKay), mysterious drifter Liam (Turner) and aging skipper Murgey (Franciss Magee) volunteer to be among the three-person crew that takes it back out to catch some fish and hopefully revitalise the community. However, something strange awaits the crew upon their return: it is suddenly the year 1993, the harbour and local pub are filled with locals, and most curiously of all everyone believes that Nick and Liam are the very men who originally disappeared with the boat.

Yes, Rose of Nevada is a time-travel movie, but rather than dabble in the sci-fi/fantasy aspect of it all, Jenkin takes a fascinatingly psychological approach to suddenly finding oneself in a different era. Nick, for instance, is driven to anxiety over returning home to find his home unoccupied and that he, along with both his wife and daughter, doesn’t even exist yet, with his protests falling on deaf ears because, again, everyone sees him as somebody else. By contrast, Liam almost instantly takes to being recognised as a family man himself, stepping into the role of husband to local Tina (Rosalind Eleazar) and father to their own children, with not a single ounce of guilt or regret for effectively taking over the life of another person. There are interesting parallels that Jenkin draws between its two leads as one has and then loses stability while the other goes from sleeping rough to domestication in a flash, and through some tight close-up cinematography as well as sharp sound design the filmmaker conveys the sheer terror but also, and arguably more frightening, the blissful acceptance of being lost to a different time.

As it did with his previous features, the archaic filmmaking creates an eerie atmosphere that compliments the cerebral themes of Jenkin’s script. Opening static shots linger for at least five seconds apiece on various parts of the rusting yet strangely intact titular vessel, the grainy 16mm filter highlighting its literal timelessness while the ticking of the clockwork Bolex camera constantly suggests the seconds going rapidly by in either direction. The sound editing, from the ADR dialogue to the simple clanking of someone going up a ladder, is seamlessly stitched to the footage in ways that almost give it an otherworldly vibe, especially when certain voices and noises become further and further distorted during heightened moments of panic or uncertainty, like they’re being heard out of some old walkie-talkies. Even some of the larger set pieces, like a stormy boat-set sequence or a panicked car ride, carry Jenkin’s signature thematic complexity as they dabble in nightmarish imagery driven by the lead characters’ separate apprehensions and contentment with their unusual situation.

Unfortunately, a major misgiving of Rose of Nevada is its pacing. At nearly two hours, it’s granted more time than both Bait and Enys Men to flesh out certain themes and establish certain characters, but much of the first section is made up on a lot of those lingering shots that seem to go by much slower than intended, with minimal narrative development until at least twenty minutes in, when we finally set sail on the boat itself. This makes it a little difficult to feel truly immersed in this story and these characters, since it’s so easy for your mind to wander as Jenkin tends to indulge in stylised imagery that could at the very least have been trimmed down to make things go by a bit quicker. Although things pick up once we’ve made the jump back in time, with the plot and character development moving along at a more acceptable pace, there is that initial lingering worry that the remaining film will struggle to stay afloat when it hasn’t presented the sturdiest of surfaces for audiences to climb aboard onto.

But beyond that, Rose of Nevada is another formidable made-by-hand offering by an auteur that is actively disproving the notion that modern-day filmmaking can be one thing and one thing only.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Rose of Nevada is an eerie offering from filmmaker Mark Jenkin that explores the psychological ramifications of being stuck in a different time through his ever-impressive, if somewhat slow-paced, archaic filmmaking method.