By Ellie Dean.
I wanted to show what it’s really like on Kentish Town Road, which is my high street in London—and a pretty grimy, gritty place. There’s something really fun about putting a movie star into that kind of place and watching the reactions of the real people as she goes by.”
Kevin Macdonald is a director who resists classification. His oeuvre comprises narrative films, documentaries, television features and even a collaboration with YouTube (the memorable Life in a Day, first released in 2011). Nevertheless, across that diverse mix—which includes the Oscar winning documentary One Day in September (1999), historical fiction The Last King of Scotland (2006), survival docudrama Touching the Void (2003), musical biopic Marley (2012) and legal epic The Mauritanian (2021)—there is an evident and consistent interest in themes of survival, political struggle and moral pressure. His newest film, The Runner (2026), is no exception. As a fast-paced action thriller (and one unapologetically geared towards audience entertainment), it appears to announce a new—and somewhat surprising—direction for his work. However, in its core themes and concerns, the film also remains undeniably ‘Macdonald’.
The film’s story follows Gal Gadot as Maia, a highly accomplished lawyer—and dedicated single mother—whose morning run is interrupted by a sinister phone call. The voice on the other line (Damian Lewis) claims to have her child captive: to save his life, she embarks on a gruelling race across London, fulfilling a series of increasingly merciless commands. Ultimately, as the battle of wits intensifies, she’s forced to make an impossible decision—choosing between her morals, and her love for her son—and confront just how far she’s willing to go to bring him home.
In anticipation of the film’s premiere, Film International spoke to Kevin Macdonald about London high streets, his turn to the action genre, phone snatching and the experience of working with new production company Rockwood Pictures.
The Runner is quite different to what we’ve seen from you before—but you’re no stranger to experimenting with different modes and styles of filmmaking. How did you approach making an action film, and where did that switch come from?
I think I just wanted to do something different. And I loved the concept of this film. David, the producer, sent me a script. It was originally set in New York and I read it and I thought, wow, this is great. We can move this to London. I can shoot it outside my house in North London, which is what I did. All the sets pretty much were in walking distance or bicycling distance of where I lived. That was a big benefit. But really, it’s the idea, the simple concept of a main character who’s on the move the whole time and who’s running the whole way through the movie. I just loved the technical challenge of that, and the mechanical challenge of working the story.
How did your previous work in documentary help you solve that challenge?
In the film, a lot of the crowds she runs through, they’re real busy streets—and real people. She’s just running through uncontrolled streets, and I so wanted to do that: I wanted to have those natural reactions, with people dressed as they normally dress. No matter how much you tell a costume designer to just make [a crowd] ordinary, they always want to add too much.
I also really wanted to sort of do a film which people go back to in 20, 30 years and go, oh, that’s what London was like in 2026. I love that about movies shot on location. Now, you look back and say, shot in the 70s or 80s, and you’re like, oh, wow, it’s so great to see the clothes and the environment and how people behave. I wanted it to be real in that way.
And then I think I also had a lot of fun also working on this theme of the dangers of technology: our addiction to phones, the surveillance around us every day. That’s the kind of thing that I would normally make a documentary about, but I got to bring it in as a theme in this [narrative], which was nice.
Is there something specific you’d like audiences to take away from that theme? Perhaps something about our relationship with phones?
Throw it out the window. Throw it out the window. I mean, that’s the last shot of the movie, isn’t it? Maya throws the phone out of her window. No, I mean, it’s more of a satire, I guess. But a satire [that is] probably is pretty close to the truth. I don’t know if you go on public transport these days, as I do in London, you’re on a bus, you’re on the underground train. Everybody is on their phone. Nobody’s looking at a single thing. They’ve got headphones on. So it does make you think, you know, I could be in real danger. I could be in turmoil and nobody’s even going to notice. And I guess we’ve become kind of zombified.
That’s more of an observation about things than anything else. I don’t have any great prescription as to how we’re going to get out of this.
I love that you included a phone-snatching moment as well. Very appropriate to the modern London setting.
Well, that’s what the media would like you to think—that London is this dangerous city. But it’s not that bad. We don’t have much more phone snatching than anywhere else. But yeah, that’s definitely something of the moment.
Absolutely. What did else did that London setting bring to the film, then—apart from being able to film outside your house? Did it change the story in other ways?
Yeah, because the whole story has to operate like clockwork. So you’ve got to think, okay, what tube station does she run down? Where does she get on? Okay, so if she’s going to go one stop, what is that stop? Then what does that mean the run is going to be? And will her cell phone work underground? So we chose a part of the line that is very, very near to the surface, where your phone works perfectly. You’re constantly asking these logical questions.
I think it’s so much fun to show the real nature of a city. Usually, in movies—particularly entertainment movies—you get the glossy tourist version. But for this, I wanted to show what it’s really like on Kentish Town Road which is my high street in London—and a pretty grimy, gritty place. There’s something really fun about putting a movie star into that kind of place and watching the reactions of the real people as she goes by.
On that filming process, actually, I wanted to ask some more about the behind-the-scenes process. This is one of the very first features released by David Cossey’s new venture Rockwood Pictures.
Yes.
Can you tell me something about the experience of collaborating with them?
Yeah, so I’ve known David for a very long time. You know, the British film industry isn’t that big. And we were having lunch—just a sort of casual lunch. And he said, I’ve started this new company and I’ve got a couple of scripts. Would you read them? Are you interested in doing something? And I said, yeah, I actually would like to do a really commercial, fun movie, having done a lot of quite heavy things. And he sent me a couple of things. And one of them was this. It was The Runner.
I think David has decided that he’s done everything in the film business behind the scenes and now he wants to actually produce. And he was very, very good—and very pleasant to work with. It’s hard to say much more about a producer. We had a lot of problems on this film. It was quite a tough shoot. And I think he was kind of like…exploding with all the things that can go wrong during filming. Usually, he’s used to distributing, or seeing things when they’re finished. With this, he was in the trenches, in the nitty gritty. I think he found it stressful but addictive. So he definitely wants to do more. And he’s got a lot of things in the pipeline.
Yes! I understand one of them is another project with you, right? Last Exit.
Yeah, we’re working on something together. And it’s kind of like…I don’t want to say too much about it, but it’s almost the way the opposite of this. Instead of being about somebody on the move, it’s about someone who’s captive the whole time. So it’s another high concept thriller.
The Runner premiered globally on Prime Video on September 2nd, 2026.
Ellie Dean is an independent cinema scholar based in Australia.