It's been a big year for famous movie stars making their first forays into feature directing. Throughout 2025, Harris Dickinson (Urchin), Kristen Stewart (The Chronology of Water) and Scarlett Johansson (Eleanor the Great) have all stepped behind the camera for the first time, and now it's the turn of Kate Winslet to prove her directing chops.
The Oscar-winner's debut film is Goodbye June, a tearjerking Yuletide-set drama which is getting a brief theatrical release this week ahead of arriving on Netflix on Christmas Eve. Unsurprisingly given her standing in the industry, Winslet has assembled a stellar cast of talented actors to bring the film to life, with key parts for Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough and Johnny Flynn, while she's also saved a meaty role for herself.
The drama's script was notably written by Winslet's 21-year-old son Joe Anders, who was just 19 when he penned the first draft on a screenwriting course. Accusations of nepotism are inevitable (and perhaps not unfounded) and there are undoubtedly times where the screenplay does feel somewhat like the work of a novice, with a rather laboured opening act and a tendency to lean too far into schmaltz. However, there are also a number of genuinely moving touches that show an emotional maturity to Anders's work, especially in the film's latter stages.
View Green Video on the source websiteIt helps that the subject matter is inherently emotional. The film tells the story of four semi-estranged siblings (played by Winslet, Riseborough, Collette and Flynn) who are brought together and forced to work through their differences as they prepare to say goodbye to their terminally ill mother (Mirren) who has taken a turn for the worse and seems unlikely to make it to Christmas.
Still, as a portrait of a complicated family dynamic, the film mostly works. The complex relationships the siblings share with each other and their emotionally distant father (Spall) are well observed, even if this film doesn't quite have the depth of another recent Netflix-released film about warring siblings thrust together to care for a dieing parent, Azazel Jacobs's His Three Daughters.
But for the most part this is an effective weepy, and the A-list cast elevate the material beyond its occasionally formulaic approach. Mirren is unsurprisingly peerless as the title character, imbuing her with both an optimism (at one point we hear her pressing ahead with making plans for after the Christmas period) and acceptance of her fate, but also with a sense of regret and the feeling of unfinished business.
So while perhaps this doesn't quite announce Winslet as a major new directorial voice – her approach is more functional than eye-catching – Goodbye June is still a worthwhile film with some impressive moments, and seems likely to leave many a viewer with a tear in their eye.
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