Rotten Tomatoes
Submit search Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

Play trailer Poster for I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning 2026 1h 49m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
94% Tomatometer 16 Reviews Popcornmeter 0 Ratings
Childhood friends; Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli, and Conor played together, skipped school together and dreamt of the lives they would have one day. Now they're thirty, and the future they imagined is slipping quietly out of reach.

Critics Reviews

View More
Leslie Felperin The Hollywood Reporter May 26
A hearty, quintessentially British-Irish café fry-up of gritty realism, class consciousness and masculine despair, all washed down with tannic, milky mugs of message-bearing melodrama in the tradition of Ken Loach. Go to Full Review B. Ruby Rich Sight & Sound May 26
The destruction of housing, emblematised through the film’s spectral visions, may be Patrick’s obsession, but it haunts all the characters’ life decisions. Go to Full Review Beatrice Loayza Variety May 23
The performances give life to its characters, but the script is laughably heavy-handed in the way it stakes out the themes and rushes through character arcs. Go to Full Review Shannon Cotter Film Ireland Magazine 1d
The dynamic, quickly cut camerawork by Simon Tindall and the brash, down-to-earth dialogue put I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning very firmly in the much-beloved kitchen-sink genre of Ken Loach and Shane Meadows. Go to Full Review Hector A. Gonzalez InSession Film May 27
A-
The approach is full of empathy and honesty–attuned to today’s anxieties, while recognizing the dignity and complexity of those attempting to survive through these tough times. Go to Full Review Jara Yáñez Caimán Cuadernos de Cine May 26
Music is that form of collective resistance that lends the film a melancholic echo of the youth of the nineties, a youth that refuses to fade away. [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review Read all reviews

Cast & Crew

View All

Clio Barnard

Director

Anthony Boyle

Actor

Joe Cole

Actor

Jay Lycurgo

Actor

Daryl McCormack

Actor

Lola Petticrew

Actor
View All

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

View more photos

Movie Info

Synopsis Childhood friends; Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli, and Conor played together, skipped school together and dreamt of the lives they would have one day. Now they're thirty, and the future they imagined is slipping quietly out of reach.
Director
Clio Barnard
Producer
Tracy O'Riordan, Claudia Yusef, Mia Bays
Screenwriter
Enda Walsh
Production Co
Moonspun Films, BBC Film, BFI
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Runtime
1h 49m