Moss & Freud brings together two British icons at a very strange, very intimate point in their lives: Kate Moss at the height of her fame, and Lucian Freud deep in his late-career intensity. James Lucas turns their real-life sittings into a quiet drama about image, discipline, vulnerability and the awkward business of being truly seen.
Film details
- Title: Moss & Freud
- Premiere date in the Netherlands: 2 July 2026
- Director: James Lucas
- Runtime: 100 minutes
- Genre: Drama
- Countries: United Kingdom, New Zealand
- Language: English
- Subtitles: Dutch
- Age rating: 12+
- Cast: Ellie Bamber, Derek Jacobi, Jasmine Blackborow, Tim Downie and Will Tudor
- Where to watch in Rotterdam: Cinerama, LantarenVenster
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What’s the vibe?
London, early 2000s. Kate Moss is one of the most recognisable faces on the planet when she agrees to sit for Lucian Freud, the famously intense painter often described as one of the great artists of the twentieth century. She expects a collaboration. What she gets is a long, exacting series of sessions that slowly pulls her away from the noise of celebrity and into the strange quiet of the studio.
The film focuses on the relationship that forms between Moss and Freud across those sittings. There is discipline, mutual curiosity, artistic ego and a lot of looking. Because yes, this is very much a film about being watched, but also about what happens when someone finally sees past the public image.
Ellie Bamber plays Moss with a mix of glamour and restlessness, while Derek Jacobi gives Freud the prickly calm of someone who has spent a lifetime turning observation into power. It is more chamber drama than fashion-world spectacle, though the period styling does have its fun. Noughties London has entered the chat, and it brought cigarette smoke, flashbulbs and complicated feelings.
Trailer
Check out the trailer below.
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Why you might like it
- Eyes: Early-2000s fashion, studio interiors, paint-heavy textures and that striking Union Jack-meets-blue-gown poster image.
- Heart: The film is built around an unlikely friendship between two people who are both famous for image, but not always for being understood.
- Mind: It asks what portraiture really takes from a person, and whether being turned into art can feel freeing, exposing or both.
Critical reception.
Moss & Freud has received a mixed critical response. Rotten Tomatoes currently lists the film at 60% from 15 critic reviews, with no audience score available yet. That puts it in a borderline zone: some critics admire the performances, styling and cultural subject matter, while others feel the film does not quite dig deeply enough into either Moss or Freud.
Metacritic has limited review data at the time of writing, with The Telegraph listed at 60. The broader pattern is similar: critics tend to find the film watchable and polished, but some argue that its thoughts on art, beauty and power remain closer to the surface than the subject deserves.
The more positive reactions highlight Ellie Bamber’s transformation into Moss and Derek Jacobi’s presence as Freud. Several critics also enjoyed the film’s evocation of early-2000s British culture and the way it frames the sitting sessions as a space of reflection rather than scandal. The harsher reviews call it too soft, too authorised or too polite about a relationship that could have been explored with sharper tension.
No major awards have been announced for the film so far. Its main festival credential is its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, where it arrived as a fashion-meets-art biographical drama with Kate Moss herself involved behind the scenes.
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Scene to watch for
Watch the first proper studio sitting. The film’s tension is not built around big revelations, but around stillness: where Moss looks, where Freud looks, who is in control and how quickly the glamour drains from the idea of being painted. It is all very calm, which somehow makes it more exposing.
Recommended pairing
Pair this one with an art-minded afternoon or evening. A gallery visit before the film would work beautifully, especially if you want to arrive already thinking about portraiture, performance and the difference between looking stylish and being studied like evidence.
For food, keep it simple and slightly elegant: a light meal, a glass of something crisp, or coffee and cake if you are going earlier in the day. Afterwards, take a slow walk and discuss whether you would ever sit for a portrait for months. Most of us would last about three minutes before asking whether our left side looked weird.
Need-to-knows
Moss & Freud is based on Kate Moss’s real-life sittings for Lucian Freud in 2002. Freud painted Moss while she was pregnant with her daughter Lila, and the process took months. The final portrait later sold at auction in 2005 for several million pounds.
Kate Moss is an executive producer on the film, which gives the project an authorised feel. The Lucian Freud Archive also supported the production, so the film is clearly interested in presenting the story with a sense of cultural respect rather than tabloid chaos. Shame for gossip, good for dignity.
James Lucas writes and directs the film. He previously won an Academy Award for the short film The Phone Call, and Moss & Freud marks his feature-film directing debut.
