For Night Will Come (UK Premiere)

Part of Dundead Film Festival 2025 - see the full programme and book a Festival Pass.

Documentary filmmaker Céline Rouzet makes her fiction feature debut with For Night Will Come. This evocative and beautifully-observed coming-of-age film is set against the backdrop of an unfolding summer in rural France and offers a refreshing take on the vampire myth with echoes of Let the Right One In. 

The Féral family (mother, father, young daughter Lucie and teenage son Philémon) have moved to a small town in search of a fresh start. There is a matter-of-factness to the reality of Philémon’s vampirism, as he survives on blood transfusions from his mother, played with absolute conviction by Élodie Bouchez. As the family tries to integrate into their new neighbourhood though, Philémon’s true nature threatens to shatter any hope of an ordinary life.

In many ways, this is classic coming-of-age filmmaking, with a palpable sense of growing pains for its teenage protagonist Philémon, played with sensitivity and incisiveness by Mathias Legout Hammond. Rouzet pays just as much attention to the family dynamics as she does the horror elements and brilliantly captures that uniquely teenage sense of a vast sweltering summer stretching out before you. At its heart is a story of the bond between mother and son; a superbly acted, moving portrait of one mother’s fiercely unconditional love.