Whitetail Review (Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2025)
Woods never disappoints, least of all on the big screen. Writer and director Nanouk Leopold (It’s All So Quiet, 2013) places an almost blind trust in the forests of Southern Ireland, County Cork, a landscape that has been steadily drawing the film industryโs attention. Rightfully so, since the scenery, as if holding mysteries isolated from ordinary city life, offers an idyllic backdrop for meditative contemplation and behavioural observation.
Leopoldโs tale is unassuming and, in many ways, unsurprising. Jan, a conservation ranger in her late thirties, lives with her father in near isolation. Her life is ruled by an obsessive commitment to protecting the forest. Their quiet existence circles around a tragedy known to all but revisited by few: the accidental shooting and killing of Janโs sister by her own teenage hands. The event continues to pull her being into a totalitarian force of deflection and negation. Jan has grown into a boyish woman whoโd punch you on the nose if you got too close, and a fiery defender who would drag dead deer out of her truck in front of the townโs police station to demand intervention.
Yet Jan, embodied by the seasoned Natasha OโKeeffe (for reference, Peaky Blinders, The Wheel of Time), is far from one-dimensional. OโKeeffeโs presence is magnetic, drawing all eyes to Janโs face as she builds anticipation for each subtle shift, a new expression, a pivotal answer, and another peeling of the character. Perhaps itโs the pictureโs restraint, or its closeness to the narrative tools many viewers have absorbed through mini-series (HBO deserves some credit for this education), that produces a quietly thrilling sense of engagement. And perhaps, for the same reasons, weโre guided toward a simple association: the authority of tragedy.
I donโt say this lightly. Whitetail gives us plenty of forest views (Dutch cinematographer Frank van den Eeden knows all the cameraโs plays and ploys), and Janโs devotion to the landscape could easily slip into ecological didacticism. Her work, monitoring protected areas inhabited by deer and badgers where illegal hunting has been detected, could be mistaken for activism. Yet alongside this plain dramatization thread, the film allows for a deeper character connection, one that opens questions about the selfโs captivity in guilt and inner descent. Freedom, we learn, is a bird that can only fly after a deep fall.
Leopold may be tracing familiar narrative paths adapted from television drama, but she does so with intent and precision. Whitetail is a gentle and soft watch that stays.
Whitetail was first screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and had its European premiere at the 66th Thessaloniki International Film Festival as part of the Special Screenings section.
Whitetail, 103โ / Dir. & screenplay: Nanouk Leopold / With: Natasha O’Keeffe, Andrew Bennett, Aaron McCusker / Production: Circe Films, Kaap Holland Film, Archer Gray / Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland
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