6 Minutes
Mark Jenkin returns to Cornwall with a tactile, mysterious voyage
Mark Jenkin, the Cornish auteur known for his analogue, grain-rich approach to cinema, has again drawn a loyal troupe of collaborators for Rose of Nevada — a film that premiered in Venice's Orizzonti strand and immediately marked itself as one of the festival's most singular entries. Led by George MacKay and Callum Turner, Jenkin’s latest is a maritime fable that mixes folk horror, elegiac poetry, and the rough labour of coastal life.
Story and performances: a small cast, big tides
Set in a forgotten fishing village, Rose of Nevada centres on a ghostly boat that returns to harbour thirty years after it vanished with all hands. MacKay plays Nick, a father who takes work on the vessel to feed his family. Turner is Liam, a newcomer seeking escape. After a short trip at sea, the men return to find time unmoored: the village treats them as if they were the boat’s original crew. The premise is simple but the film unfolds as a mood piece — claustrophobic, eerie and quietly devastating.
MacKay and Turner on craft and commitment
Both actors praise Jenkin’s uncompromising methods. According to Turner, the script felt 'like a painting meets a poem' and summoned physical sensations as much as plot. MacKay emphasised the project's liminality, describing the screenplay as 'austere, but poetic.' Their performances are shaped by the mechanical discipline of Jenkin’s process: short film takes, exacting physicality and a rigorous post-production of sound.
How Rose of Nevada was made: Bolex, 16mm and the sound of waves
Jenkin shot the film on 16mm using a hand-cranked Bolex, a signature choice that creates textured, tactile images impossible to replicate digitally. The camera’s limits were embraced rather than avoided: every take lasted about 27 seconds before the camera had to be wound again. That constraint produced a rare kind of precision. The Bolex also captures no synchronous sound, meaning every footstep, grunt and gust in the finished film was recreated in ADR — often by Jenkin himself, who recorded many of the film’s foley elements.
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Real boats, real fishermen
The production used a real fisherman’s boat and leaned on local expertise. Actors practised with Lee Carter, whose vessel appears on screen; MacKay recalls being shown the scars of hard work at sea and the matter-of-fact toughness of real crews. Many of the hauling and netting scenes were performed as live as possible, contributing to an authenticity that grounds the film’s supernatural edges.
Where Rose of Nevada sits in Jenkin’s work and contemporary cinema
Rose of Nevada feels like a continuation of the director’s aesthetic arc from Bait to Enys Men — films that fuse folkloric unease with analogue textures. Where Bait examined economic displacement and Enys Men mythologised isolation, Rose of Nevada leans further into maritime mythology and horror’s slow-burn register. Festival programmers and critics have compared its creeping dread to Kubrick’s The Shining in atmosphere, while practical sequences recall bigger sea-bound films like The Perfect Storm — but Jenkin’s film remains distinctly small, intimate and formally strict.
There’s also a growing conversation in international cinema about analogue revivalism: directors returning to film stock and mechanical cameras to reclaim texture and unpredictability. Jenkin’s dedication to 16mm and to manual sound work places him at the centre of that trend, attracting cinephiles who prize materiality as much as narrative.
Critical perspective and festival trajectory
Rose of Nevada is Jenkin’s most ambitious production to date: it layers complex sequences in harsh conditions while refusing to spell out an ending. That ambiguity is deliberate. Turner says Jenkin 'doesn’t like endings' and prefers to leave viewers with a 'spiritual journey' rather than a tidy explanation. The film’s Venice premiere is only the start: it will travel to Toronto, New York and London, and Protagonist Pictures is handling sales.
Expert view
'Jenkin’s films ask viewers to slow down and to feel the texture of cinema itself,' says cinema historian Elena Márquez. 'Rose of Nevada continues his experiment in making form mean something: the camera’s constraints become narrative devices, and silence and sound are choices that shape how we experience time.'
Trivia, influences and final thoughts
Behind the scenes: takes were short, the ADR process exhaustive, and Jenkin personally contributed many of the film’s foley sounds. The director reportedly referenced Robert Bresson’s spare moral cinema alongside sea epics like The Perfect Storm for tonal orientation, though his approach is idiosyncratic rather than imitative.
For audiences who follow auteur-driven festival cinema, Rose of Nevada will feel like both a return and a step forward — familiar in method but stranger in its maritime myth-making. Its ambiguous conclusion will divide viewers, which is exactly the point.
Conclusion
Rose of Nevada is a film that rewards patience and close attention: a tactile 16mm experience where sound is sculpted in the studio, performances are tempered by mechanical limits, and Cornwall’s coastal world becomes a site for something uncanny. For fans of analogue craft, slow-burn horror and films that trust the audience to finish the meaning, Jenkin’s latest is essential viewing.
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