"Control at Christmas"

22 December 2025

80s

Silent suffering.

This film for a charity called The First Step offers an important reminder that coercive control isn't suspended for the festive period. Indeed, the forced proximity and socialising of Christmas tends to heighten it, and that's what is demonstrated in this single shot conversation between a victim of this phenomenon and her unseen antagonist as he drives her home from a visit to her parents.

Director Libby Burke Wilde uses a lot of constraint in depicting a very uncomfortable conversation. A woman who is well aware of her partner's proclivities tries to navigate her way through the control he exerts over her, accepting it when he takes her phone and asking with nervous compliance to his authority over her if she might be able to have her debit card to buy some gifts the following day. The script is restrained too, as his reply to her request isn't obviously hostile, leaving the audience to recognise that it's the very fact that she has to ask that's the problem.

The growly voice performance from the unseen man veers towards the obvious but, that reservation aside, this is excellent work and should draw attention to a problem which will clearly be worsening as the current political climate embraces a renewal of male toxicity.

UK

Charities