October 2015
Alex Lawther, who made such a vivid impression with scant screen time as the schoolboy Alan Turing in Benedict Cumberbatch starring The Imitation Game, steps up impressively into his first lead role in Departure. This feature debut by theatre and short films director Andrew Steggall is an assuredly composed coming-of-age tale about a poetry-scribbling teenage boy nursing a barely reciprocated crush on a more boldly masculine French lad, one late-summer week in southern France. Sensitive gay audiences should respond enthusiastically at festival slots and niche theatrical play, following the picture’s official world premiere at the London Film Festival....read more
October 2015
A heartbreaking ode to the many autumns of life – a poetic eulogy to love and loss that is as sensitive and contemplative as it is beautiful to behold....read more
October 2015
A la seule vue des premières images, on comprend que Departure s’inscrit dans la catégorie des films délicats, de ceux qui souhaitent que leur sujet soit ressenti – compris – et non raconté.....read more
October 2015
A promising debut from British director Andrew Steggall, and certain to become an LGBT classic, Departure is a true work of art and is not to be missed......read more
October 2015
Met Departure had Film Fest Gent nog een late verrassing in petto en het was er eentje van formaat. Met zijn langspeeldebuut levert de Brit Andrew Steggall een gevoelig drama af dat geen generatie onaangeroerd mag laten. Protagonist Elliot (geweldig vertolkt door The Imitation Game-ster Alex Lawther) arriveert samen met zijn moeder (Juliet Stevenson) in hun vakantiehuis in het zuiden van Frankrijk, niet om uit te blazen, maar om de boel te koop te zetten. Hun gezinssituatie staat duidelijk onder druk, maar daar komt u na verloop van tijd meer van te weten......read more
October 2015
The themes of sexual awakening, teenage longings and parental confrontation may seem like a recurring stamping ground for coming-of-age movies, but the first feature by British director Andrew Steggall manages to offer something unique by tackling the transformation undergone by a young man and his mother at a time of crucial changes......read more
January 2017
Andrew Steggall’s debut feature, “Departure,” shows considerable promise with the sensitivity of its emotional and aesthetic palette in sketching an English mother and teenage son’s unhappy sojourn to shutter a rural French vacation home.......read more
