How far would you go to save your child?
Screening Details:
Date: Monday 21st September
Time: 3:15 pm for 3:30 pm start
Location: Central London Screening Room
Cynefilms is proud to announce that their compelling feature film Child, directed by Oscar® nominee Cyrus Neshvad, will be released in UK cinemas from 2 October. Child has been longlisted for the 2027 Academy Award® for Best International Feature Film.
To save their dying son, a father follows his wife into a mysterious journey where the promise of life slowly reveals the monstrous depths of a parent’s love.
Neshvad was nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short Film in 2023 for The Red Suitcase, a tense drama about a teenage Iranian girl fleeing an arranged marriage. Child marks his first feature, which asks a question with no comfortable answer: what would any parent do, and where would they stop, to save a dying child?
Child had its World Premiere in the First Feature strand of the 2026 Raindance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature. Early reactions praised the film’s unrelenting atmosphere and moral bleakness, with reviews from outlets including Filmhounds Magazine and Warped Perspective.
Filmhounds Magazine awarded the film four stars, praising how “Neshvad pushes the boundaries of horror cinema focused on grief, love, and desperation with this twisty, unpredictable, fantastical horror” whilst Warped Perspective added that “child works effectively on its own terms, keeping a very humane, character-focused approach throughout its bizarre literal and metaphorical journey.”
Following the announcement of the 2027 Oscar® long list, director Cyrus Neshvad said:
“We live in a world where powerful, wealthy countries too often take what they need from the most vulnerable ones. With CHILD, I wanted to push that reality to its most disturbing extreme: what if, to save our own children, we became willing to take from the children of those who have nothing?
That is where, for me, the horror begins. When we exploit the vulnerable, we create the monster we later fear.
This is why I chose to make CHILD as a deeply realistic horror film. I didn’t want the monster to come from somewhere supernatural. I wanted it to come from us — from our privilege, our actions, and even from our love.
The film tells the story of a father who follows his wife on a mysterious journey to save their dying son, where the promise of life slowly reveals the monstrous edge of a parent’s love.”
Child stars César Award winner Malik Zidi (Oxygen), Brigitte Urhausen (Fils), Lydia Indjova (Sunny Beach), Anne Klein (The Roaming) and Dmytro Yaroshenko (L’été de Jahia).
Distributor: Cynefilms
UK Theatrical Release: 2nd October
Short Synopsis: With their young son running out of time, Anne and Greg are willing to sacrifice everything for one last chance to save him. But after crossing an unforgivable moral line, they find themselves trapped in a nightmare where every choice demands an even greater price.
Director: Cyrus Neshvad
Producers: Cyrus Neshvad, Stefan Milovic
Writers: Cyrus Neshvad, Guillaume Levil
Cast: Malik Zidi, Brigitte Urhausen, Lydia Indjova, Anne Klein and Dmytro Yaroshenko
Run Time: 78 Minutes
