What Learning to Breathe Under Water is about
Learning to Breathe Under Water centres on Leo, an eight-year-old boy whose grip on reality has become — understandably — a little loose. His dad, Peter, is an artist, and the most visible proof of that is a life-sized shark sculpture installed directly into the roof of their home. It's an image that shouldn't work and yet somehow captures everything about this family's situation: enormous, a little absurd, impossible to ignore. Leo has retreated into elaborate fantasy worlds to process a loss the film doesn't spell out immediately — the absence of his mother — and those inner landscapes feel safer, more navigable, than the strange household he actually inhabits. Then an au pair named Anya arrives, and the careful equilibrium both father and son have built around their grief starts to crack open in the best possible way.
How Learning to Breathe Under Water came together
The film is a UK–Ireland–Netherlands co-production, directed by Rebekah Fortune from a screenplay by Richard Brabin. It's produced by Jack Tarling, Nan Davies, and Patrick O'Neill across a consortium of companies — Shudder Films, Eiru Films, KeyFilm, and One Wave Films among them — which partly explains its distinctive cross-European texture. According to the British Council UK Films Database, the production spans those three territories in a way that feels genuinely collaborative rather than a tax-incentive convenience.
The cast is the kind that makes you sit up. Rory Kinnear plays Peter, the grieving artist-dad — and if you know Kinnear from his stage work at the National Theatre or his run in Years and Years, you'll understand why that casting feels like a guarantee of a certain quality. Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian-American actress who broke through in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and earned an Academy Award nomination for it, takes on the role of Anya, the Bulgarian/Polish au pair whose arrival disrupts the household's carefully managed sadness. Young Ezra Carlisle plays Leo, with supporting turns from Niamh McCann and Declan Conlon rounding out the principal ensemble.
The film had its world premiere in the Special Screenings section at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, one of Europe's most respected showcases for exactly this kind of intimate, character-driven work. Karlovy Vary's Special Screenings strand tends to flag films the programmers consider genuinely distinctive — not competition fodder, but something worth a room's full attention. The runtime sits at 95 minutes, which feels right: long enough to breathe, short enough to never overstay.
No wide theatrical box office figures are available at this stage, and aggregate critic scores on major platforms haven't yet been published. Hard to say if that will change quickly once streaming exposure widens, but the festival positioning alone suggests this one has been built with care.
The performances that anchor Learning to Breathe Under Water
What's striking is how much the film trusts its central relationship — not the romantic or platonic tension between Peter and Anya, but the slow, tentative bond between Anya and Leo. Bakalova brings a quality that's difficult to pin down: she's warm but not saccharine, direct in a way that reads as foreign to this particular household's emotional habits, and funny in moments you don't expect. That last part matters. A film about a child processing grief can tip into heavy-handedness so easily, and the script by Richard Brabin seems to understand that comedy isn't a distraction from pain — it's often the only way through it.
Kinnear, for his part, does what Kinnear does. He's an actor who can carry an enormous amount of subtext without ever announcing it, and Peter — a man who has built a giant shark rather than, say, talked to a therapist — is a character who communicates almost entirely in deflection and displacement. There's a scene early on where Peter explains the shark to Anya with a kind of defiant casualness, and Kinnear plays it as though the explanation makes perfect sense, which is exactly right.
Ezra Carlisle as Leo is the film's real gamble, and by all accounts it pays off. Child performances in films about loss can feel coached into sadness, but Carlisle apparently finds something more interesting — a kid who isn't broken so much as temporarily elsewhere, living at a slight angle to the world around him. The fantasy sequences that punctuate his interiority give the film a visual imagination that distinguishes it from the quieter end of the grief-drama genre. Movie OTT tracks titles across the full spectrum of drama and family programming, and this one sits at an interesting crossroads between the two — emotionally substantial enough for adults, visually inventive enough to hold a younger viewer.
Where to stream Learning to Breathe Under Water online
Learning to Breathe Under Water is currently available on major OTT services. The Where to Watch widget at the top of this page has the most current platform breakdown — streaming rights for festival titles like this one can shift, so it's worth checking that widget directly before you sit down to watch. Movie OTT aggregates availability across platforms in real time, which means you won't have to bounce between apps trying to track it down. Given the film's co-production structure spanning the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, regional availability may vary, and movieott.com surfaces those regional differences so you can find the right version for your location without the guesswork.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who directed Learning to Breathe Under Water?
Learning to Breathe Under Water was directed by Rebekah Fortune, working from a screenplay by Richard Brabin. The film is a UK–Ireland–Netherlands co-production that had its world premiere at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Q: Who stars in Learning to Breathe Under Water?
The principal cast includes Rory Kinnear as Peter, Maria Bakalova as Anya, and Ezra Carlisle as eight-year-old Leo. Supporting roles are filled by Niamh McCann and Declan Conlon, among others.
Q: Where can I watch Learning to Breathe Under Water?
Learning to Breathe Under Water is available on major OTT services. Check the Where to Watch widget at the top of this page for a live list of platforms, or visit Movie OTT for up-to-date streaming availability across regions.
Q: Is Learning to Breathe Under Water suitable for children?
The film is classified under Drama and Family genres and centres on an eight-year-old protagonist processing the loss of his mother through fantasy. Parents should note the grief-related themes, but the tone is gentle and the fantasy sequences are designed to be accessible to younger viewers alongside adults.
Q: What is the runtime of Learning to Breathe Under Water?
Learning to Breathe Under Water runs approximately 95 minutes. It premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2026 and is a co-production between Shudder Films, Eiru Films, KeyFilm, and One Wave Films.
Who should watch Learning to Breathe Under Water
If you're the kind of viewer who finds something like a giant rooftop shark more moving than absurd — or who suspects those two responses aren't actually different — this film is for you. Learning to Breathe Under Water is built for adults who remember what it felt like to need an escape hatch from reality, and for families navigating their own versions of loss who want something that doesn't flinch from the hard stuff but doesn't wallow in it either. Kinnear and Bakalova are reason enough to show up. Carlisle is reason enough to stay. Movie OTT has the full streaming details so you can find it wherever you watch.
