Rose of Nevada

A Cornish fishing village is in a state of economic decline. Three decades earlier, when the village was thriving, the fishing vessel Rose of Nevada and its crew fell victim to the sea. The loss of the crew still pervades through the village, the community never recovered, and the tragedy never abated. One day, Rose of Nevada reappears in the harbour,^[5] shocking former businessman Mike, who once owned the boat.

The boat couldn't have arrived at a better time for Nick. A husband and father, he struggles to make ends meet and is forced to crew the boat when his roof collapses. It is also good news for Liam, an itinerant worker who sleeps rough at the docks until he is recruited by Mike. Nick and Liam are to be led by grizzled rent-a-skipper Murgey, an experienced sailor.^[5] Before Nick sets out, he is confronted by his senile neighbor Mrs. Richards. She and her husband are still grieving the loss of their son Luke, one of the original fishermen on the Rose of Nevada, who committed suicide as a result of guilt over the loss of the boat. Mrs. Richards cryptically states that the boat was, indeed, completely lost, and hints that Luke's death was the cause. Confusing Nick for Luke, she warns him not to let the boat's crew dwindle.

Together the men set out in search of fish, and, unusually for the overfished seas, return home with a robust catch. But when the boat returns, something is amiss. They are back where they started from but 30 years before they left. Stranger still, the men have been mistaken for locals: Liam for Alan, an absentee father who, in their timeline, disappeared with the Rose of Nevada; and Nick for Luke.

On realizing he is unmoored/displaced in time, Nick runs to his now empty home, to find the Richards now welcoming him as their son. He becomes distant from them and fixated on getting back to his original time. Liam settles into the role of Alan, romancing his wife Tina and becoming a father to Jess, who he had previously flirted with in the present. He fully settles into the community, joining Mike and the other townspeople to weave a new net for the boat after the old one is lost during a storm. Nick, on the other hand, attempts again and again to reset time by returning to sea, or fleeing the town, or communicating somehow with his wife Emily, all to no avail. He is beset by disturbing visions, and eventually realizes no other fishing vessels in the town are successful, or eventually are even being sent out; The Rose of Nevada is the sole provider for the town's economy. It becomes unclear if even Liam or the mysterious and cryptic Murgey are themselves fully aware of the time travel. Nick's attempt to confront Liam over the wrongness of the situation leads to a fistfight.

Nick takes to sleeping in the future house he will own, plagued by nightmares of the original crewmates they have replaced and of Mrs. Richards. After an attempt to communicate with Emily and his daughter fails, he flees to the very same cliff where Luke originally committed suicide. The weight of his responsibility towards the Richards and towards the town stops him from killing himself. He returns to the Richards' home and settles into being their son. Returning to the Rose of Nevada for another day's work, he has a hallucinatory vision of Emily and his daughter saying goodbye at the dock, which he previously had dissuaded them from doing. Emily whispers in a distorted voice that "there is no time," before Mike abruptly helps Nick back onto the boat.

• George MacKay as Nick
• Callum Turner as Liam
• Rosalind Eleazar as Tina
• Francis Magee as Murgey
• Mary Woodvine as Mrs. Richards
• Edward Rowe as Mike
• Adrian Rawlins as Mr. Richards
• Yana Penrose as Jess / Lindsey
• Emily Daglish-Laine as Morvah
• Mae Voogd as Emily

The film was produced by Bosena and financed by Film4 Productions and the British Film Institute.^[6] The BFI contributed £1.3 million of funding for the film, the largest single production award since the BFI Filmmaking Fund was relaunched in 2023.^[7] The film was shot on location in Cornwall^[6] with the assistance of a group of students from Falmouth University.^[8]

Actor George MacKay described the film as "a joy to be part of".^[9]

Rose of Nevada is the third instalment of Jenkin's Cornish trilogy. The first, Bait, was a kitchen sink drama about the corrosive effect of tourism on coastal towns; the second, Enys Men, saw a lone wildlife volunteer worker who is plagued by visions while living on a remote island. Elements of both show up in this third film.^[5]

The film premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival,^[10] and had its North American premiere in the Special Presentations program at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2025.^[11][12] It had its U.S. premiere in the main slate of the 63rd New York Film Festival,^[13] at the Lincoln Centre, and was also screened at the 69th BFI London Film Festival.^[14]

It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 24 April 2026, by BFI Distribution.^[15]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 92 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Weaving a hypnotic tapestry of bold analogue imagery, spellbinding storytelling, and mesmeric sound, Rose of Nevada reinforces Mark Jenkins as a uniquely singular directorial voice."^[16]

Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[17]