07/08/2025 - The Centrepiece title, billed as a slow-burning, emotionally charged drama film, marks Dutch helmer Nanouk Leopold’s return to fiction after 2018’s Cobain

Natasha O'Keeffe in Whitetail (© Frank van den Eeden)

Dutch director Nanouk Leopold is back with her first fiction feature since 2018. Her new effort, titled Whitetail, will celebrate its world premiere at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (4-14 September – see the news), where it will screen in the Centrepiece sidebar.

Leopold, whose past films Guernsey [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Wolfsbergen and Brownian Movement [+see also:
trailer
film profile] earned critical acclaim and premiered at Cannes and Berlin, returns with a deeply personal script, which she also directs. Her latest effort, Cobain [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nanouk Leopold
film profile], which premiered in Generation at the Berlinale, was one of nine films shortlisted to be the Dutch entry for the Best Foreign-language Film at the 2019 Academy Awards.

Set against the haunting landscapes of County Kerry and County Cork, Whitetail is a slow-burning, emotionally charged drama that explores grief, memory and the blurred lines between past and present. Jen (Natasha O'Keeffe, from Peaky Blinders and Sherlock), a conservation ranger working in the same forest where her younger sister tragically died years earlier, finds her routine disrupted by the unexpected reappearance of Oscar (Aaron McCusker, from Bohemian Rhapsody [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Dexter), a former boyfriend. As poachers begin leaving violent marks on the land she fiercely protects, Jen is forced to confront the emotional legacy she has long suppressed.

The cast is rounded off by Andrew Bennett, Simone Kirby, Rory Nolan and Aidan O'Hare. Key creatives include DoP Frank van den Eeden, production designer Emma Lowney, art director Stephen Park and composer Stephen Rennicks.

Whitetail is a co-production involving Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium. It is being produced by Katie Holly and Evan Horan for Keeper Pictures, Stienette Boskloppe for Circe Films, Maarten Swart for Kaap Holland Film, Bart Van Langendonck for Savage Film and Martien Vlietman for Dutch broadcaster VPRO. Additional financial support came from Screen Ireland, the Netherlands Film Fund, the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and the CoBO Fund.