Weekend

The film was made for £120,000 and took $1,128,477 worldwide. Most of it was shot on location in Nottingham in late 2010, and much of the dialogue was improvised on the day. Andrew Haigh wrote, directed and edited it himself. The story covers about a day and a half. Russell goes to a club on a cold Friday night in October and meets Glen, an art student. The next morning Glen gets Russell to describe their night into a tape recorder for a project of his own. After that the two keep talking; they drink, they argue, they pick at the ways each of them is visible or hidden. That Glen is leaving the country on Sunday is established from the start. It premiered at SXSW on 11 March 2011 and won the Audience Award for Emerging Visions, then took the Grand Jury Award at Outfest in Los Angeles and won Haigh the London Film Critics' Circle award for Breakthrough British Filmmaker. Who it is for: viewers who like two-hander films built on conversation and emotional honesty. Who it is not for: anyone wanting incident. It happens almost entirely in one flat, the cutting is calm, and it never manufactures a crisis.