CAILEIGH RYAN REVIEWS THE IRISH PREMIERE OF ANNIVERSARY AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026.
The Irish premiere of Anniversary (2025) took place at the Dublin International Film Festival on a rainy Saturday morning at 10:30am. That’s too early for popcorn, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast, but this film certainly left me with plenty of food for thought. Writer and Director, Jan Komasa, speaking to the audience before the screening, said that he wrote this script in 2018 as a work of dystopian political fiction. “It was a dystopian film seven years ago!” he tells us, though it’s not a far cry from the political state of the world currently. The idea came, he says, when he was looking through annual family photographs, and how they changed over the years – different people sitting together year on year, a reflection of how we change over time.
Filmed in Dublin but set in Washington, DC, production was halted for a time by the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union strikes in 2023, however this gap in production plays in nicely to the transition of time over the five-year period in which the film takes place. Anniversary takes us inside the family life of the Taylors and follows the series of events that unfold after the 25th wedding anniversary party of parents Ellen (Diane Lane) and Paul (Kyle Chandler). Ellen, a liberal, politics professor, is stopped in her tracks when her writer son Josh (Dylan O’Brien) brings his new girlfriend to meet the family.
To Ellen’s horror, Josh’s new girlfriend, Liz Nettles, is an ex-student of Ellen’s, who wreaked havoc on Ellen’s professional career and expressed concerning far-right ideologies in a paper she wrote for the class, which Ellen found “disgusting.” As Ellen encourages Josh to seek publication for his ‘sci-fi trilogy’, he sends her reeling with a revelation. He has parked that dream. Liz is the dominant author in this relationship. Her debut novel is to be published soon, and when it is, The Change: The New Social Contract sells millions of copies, offering an alternative and right-wing way of living that takes the US by storm, so much so that the adapted American flag that adorns its cover starts popping up outside homes around the neighbourhood.
As the years progress, the Taylors’ lives descend into chaos – nobody sees eye-to-eye with Liz politically, despite her efforts to be liked and accepted into their clan. It is hard to believe that this lady, so pleasant, timid and elegant in appearance, is the driving force behind a “Frankenstein creation” that becomes an unprecedented best-seller and changes the country’s political climate with feverish intensity. What follows are various tensions that must be navigated, and we worry that the once close-knit family who respected each other’s diversity and respective careers, will be unable to overcome the new world they find themselves living in.
Anniversary addresses head-on the tragedy that unfolds when people are left without a choice, how difficult it is – impossible, almost – to really be a change-maker despite how passionately you feel about a cause. At its core, this film is about the all-too-familiar tragedy of what a country, the world, a life, can become when people are left without autonomy or choice, where it becomes entirely impossible to be both a change-maker, and to survive to see the outcome.
This ensemble really does a fantastic job of portraying a family that is real and complex and loves one another. These characters are normal people with their own individual, normal lives, who are challenged with navigating a new horizon. They cope by smoking weed down by the lake, making political jokes, and Ellen has a glass of wine permanently fixed in her hand during many scenes. Despite the heaviness of this story, there’s a welcome dose of comedic relief. A submissive husband in a prominent and confident family, Paul delivers some fantastic lines and had the audience laughing out loud. McKenna Grace is brilliant as Birdy, an optimistic and intelligent teen who sees the good in everyone. We could all do with a girl like her in our lives – an unapologetic beacon of hope for the future, a harbour of teenage optimism who believes the world can be good again.
Daryl McCormack delivers an extremely convincing performance as Rob Thompson, husband of second-oldest daughter, Cynthia, played by Zoey Deutch. Dylan O’Brien couldn’t have given us Josh any better. His character transition is frightening and believable – the Josh we encounter in the final half-hour is a far cry from the failed sci-fi author we met at the beginning. The male characters are constantly undermining, invalidating, and hindering the female ones. Each woman’s male counterpart is oblivious to the severity of this new way of living, until it becomes too late. Many moments reminded me of Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning dystopian novel, Prophet Song (Oneworld, 2023). When you truly think about it, how would you react if your life was upturned against your will?
The production standard of this film is outstanding, and you’d never guess it was filmed in Dublin unless you were familiar with some of the background settings. Even the grey skies, impossible to avoid in Ireland, played in visually to the tone of the film. It was also a real pleasure to listen to Komasa deliver a Q&A at the end of the screening, in which he offered further insight that only enhanced my appreciation of the film. He alluded to Liz and her ilk as a virus. They add and add and add to their toxic ideologies until their surroundings are at their mercy.
Watch the film in the morning if you can. It really woke me up that day.
Anniversary is now streaming on Netflix.
Caileigh Ryan is a writer and critic living in Galway. Her fiction has appeared in Tír na nÓg literary magazine, and she appeared as a guest on the poetry podcast, Sharpen Your Tongue.
