General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Blitz (2024 film)

Blitz is a 2024 British historical war drama written and directed by Steve McQueen, following a nine-year-old boy, George (Elliott Heffernan), who is evacuated from London during the Second World War and defies his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) by jumping off his evacuation train to make his way home through the bombed city.¹ It was produced for Apple Original Films by McQueen's Lammas Park alongside Working Title Films and New Regency, opened the BFI London Film Festival in October 2024, received a limited theatrical release on 1 November 2024, and began streaming on Apple TV+ on 22 November 2024.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Steve McQueen, who also produced; his previous works include 12 Years a Slave, Small Axe, and Occupied City¹^•⁴
Lead cast	Saoirse Ronan (Rita), Elliott Heffernan (George), Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Leigh Gill, Erin Kellyman¹
Setting	London during the Blitz, roughly a year into the Second World War, when the Luftwaffe bombed the city in night raids⁴^•⁵
Release	Limited theatrical release 1 November 2024; Apple TV+ streaming 22 November 2024²
Runtime and rating	120 minutes; PG-13 for thematic elements including some racism, violence, some strong language, brief sexuality and smoking²^•⁴
Critical reception	81% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (185 reviews); Metascore 71 on Metacritic based on 53 critic reviews²^•⁶
Production companies	Lammas Park, Working Title Films, New Regency Productions, Apple Studios²

Spoilers

Plot

Rita, a single mother working in a munitions factory in East London, sends her nine-year-old son George to safety in the English countryside with thousands of other schoolchildren as the bombing intensifies. George, defiant and unwilling to be separated from his mother and his grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller), leaps from the train and begins a perilous journey back to London while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.¹^•⁷

George is a biracial child, the son of a white mother and a Black father, and the film makes his experience of wartime London different from that of his white compatriots. Along the way he meets both people who help him and people who try to take advantage of him, including the Nigerian air-raid warden Ife (Benjamin Clementine), who gives him a sense of pride in his identity.⁷^•⁴ Rita's search brings her into contact with a police officer, Jack (Harris Dickinson), and the film's supporting cast includes the shelter activist Mikey Davies (Leigh Gill), who delivers a stirring speech in an underground shelter.⁴

Production and origins

McQueen has said the project began in 2003, when, working as a war artist covering Iraq, he first wanted to tell a story about the Blitz.⁸ While researching, he discovered a wartime photograph of a young Black boy with an oversized suitcase, an image that shaped the character of George.⁹ Many of the film's storylines are drawn from real incidents recounted in Joshua Levine's book The Secret History of the Blitz.¹⁰

McQueen reunited with several frequent collaborators: production designer Adam Stockhausen (12 Years a Slave, Widows), costume designer Jacqueline Durran (Small Axe), composer Hans Zimmer (12 Years a Slave), cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Little Women), and makeup designer Naomi Donne (No Time to Die).¹ Rita sings the original song "Winter Coat," written by Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson and inspired by McQueen's own late father.¹¹

Themes and approach

The film opens in mid-attack, with firefighters battling an out-of-control blaze as crowds rush toward underground shelters, and it repeatedly shows wartime authority behaving badly: at one station the gates are locked and police refuse to open them.¹²^•⁴ Reviewers noted that McQueen uses the Blitz setting to examine racism and social division in wartime Britain rather than presenting the unified "Blitz spirit" of popular memory; Time Out described a London "rife with social and racial division, where prejudice is just another kind of shrapnel for Black Londoners to dodge."³ The film extends McQueen's focus on Black British history seen in his Small Axe television anthology.⁵

Several critics compared the film to John Boorman's 1987 Hope and Glory, another story of a boy in Blitz-ravaged London; Time called McQueen's film a possible companion piece to Boorman's.⁷^•⁹ The Associated Press called it McQueen's first war movie in the technical sense while noting that struggle and survival have marked his work from 12 Years a Slave to Small Axe.⁴

Reception

The film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on 9 October 2024.³ On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 81% Tomatometer from 185 reviews, and its Metacritic Metascore of 71 from 53 critic reviews falls in the "generally favorable" range; the Metacritic breakdown counted 36 positive, 16 mixed, and 1 negative review.²^•⁶ Reception was warmer in the British press than at festival screenings, where trade and independent outlets were cooler.¹³ The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey called it "a monumental achievement in British cinema," while Screen's Fionnuala Halligan judged that the film, though satisfying as spectacle, ultimately lacked the legendary "Spirit Of" the Blitz.¹⁴^•¹⁵ Common criticisms targeted a thin, unfocused narrative and subplots that diluted the central mother-son relationship; praise went to the performances of Ronan and newcomer Heffernan, the production design, and the cinematography.¹⁶^•⁴ AP film writers ranked Blitz first among the best movies of 2024, calling it "a powerful and clear-eyed odyssey through London during the German bombing raid."¹⁷ The film received four nominations, including at the BAFTA Film Awards and Critics Choice Awards.¹⁸

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 20, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 20, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026