One of the highlights from International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year was Ben Petrie’s The Heirloom, a rom-com psychodrama in which he stars alongside Grace Glowicki as a couple who adopt a dog and learn what it means to become a family. Picked up by Factory 25, ahead of a Toronto screening at TIFF next week and theatrical release in 2025, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first trailer.
Here’s the synopsis: “The Heirloom follows a control freak who becomes seized by artistic inspiration when he and his girlfriend adopt a traumatized rescue dog and begin attempting to train her. A devotedly funny rom-com psychodrama, THE HEIRLOOM is a deeply intimate and personal chamber piece about a long-term couple struggling desperately to become a family.”
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “This is often very funny, even as Eric’s narrativizing threatens to further hinder the relationship. Petrie allows Eric’s new obsession to spill into sequences that feel genuinely Kaufmanesque (an overused word, granted, but a distinction well-earned here). In one example, shot from Eric’s POV, Allie excitedly turns around to inform him that Milly has peed; Eric then begins seeing the moment repeated as if in multiple takes, Allie’s performance straining to hit the desired note. Whether these repeats are real or imagined is never explicated, though it’s fevered enough to appear like a figment of Eric’s lockdown brain. In a later scene, a boom mic operator crosses the shot without disturbing the character’s flow, a jarring intrusion during a moment of real vulnerability––and a sharp directorial choice that both douses the tension and accentuates its source.”
See the exclusive trailer below.
