Cornish Filmmaker’s Eerie Maritime Timeslip to 1993

Mark Jenkin has described his new film Rose of Nevada as a “bigger-budget” project that still adheres to his distinctive, hands-on filmmaking approach, emphasizing that even with increased resources, he avoids “luxuriating too much” in the process.

The Cornish filmmaker, now approaching 50, continues to work with the same analog techniques that have defined his career, including shooting on 16mm film using a clockwork Bolex H16 camera and processing the footage by hand. This method, he notes, naturally limits takes to no more than 28 seconds due to the mechanical constraints of the equipment.

Rose of Nevada centers on a fishing vessel that mysteriously returns to a Cornish harbour after three decades, prompting its new crew to embark on a voyage that transports them back to the Cornwall of 1993. The film explores themes of time, memory, and loss, set against the backdrop of a tight-knit fishing community where death and the sea are ever-present forces.

Jenkin returns to the world of his 2019 debut feature Bait, which also focused on the lives of fish trawler workers. While Bait was shot in black and white, Rose of Nevada employs rich, vivid colour reminiscent of Super 8 home movies, enhancing its dreamlike, nostalgic quality.

The film stars Edward Rowe, a local fisher and frequent collaborator, in the lead role, alongside Callum Turner and George MacKay. Jenkin has noted the presence of rising talent in the cast, mentioning that one of the actors is “possibly the next James Bond,” though he did not specify which.

Despite the larger scale of the production, Jenkin maintains his signature aesthetic: a quasi-primitivist style that favours the eerie and the uncanny. His films are known for their textured, tactile quality, achieved through hand-developed 16mm stock that often bears visible scratches and imperfections, with dialogue and ambient sound added in post-production.

This approach creates what critics have described as a “remembered dream” — a blurring of illusion and reality that is especially pronounced during the film’s actual dream sequences. Jenkin aims to evoke the physical sensation of celluloid moving through a projector, a rarity in the digital age.

Rose of Nevada premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is set to open in UK cinemas on 24 April 2026, accompanied by Q&A screenings. Early responses have highlighted its accessibility compared to Jenkin’s earlier work, while still remaining deeply rooted in his Cornish artistic principles.

The film continues Jenkin’s long-standing engagement with the Cornish landscape and seascape, a thematic and geographic constant across his filmography, which includes earlier works such as The Rabbit, The Midnight Drives, Bronco’s House, Bait, and Enys Men.