Straight Circle Trailer Lands Without a U.S. Date

Joint Venture released the Straight Circle trailer on September 8 and still has not named a U.S. opening day. Oscar Hudson’s first feature, listed at 108 minutes in Marrakech, is due in theaters nationwide this fall.

Elliott Tittensor and Luke Tittensor, real twins, play enemy soldiers on the same remote border post. A goat herder wanders over the line, and the uniforms stop doing the job they were issued to do.

Two Enemy Soldiers Share a Face

The setup is a ceremonial truce in a flat desert. Two men of equal rank, one from each invented country, keep watch over sand. Heat and boredom do most of the work until the herder crosses and the post begins to forget which side is which.

Hudson has described the movie as “a very silly story about very serious stuff.” He said it asks questions about nations and the lines drawn in sand, that it is “partly set everywhere” and “especially set nowhere,” and that it features “serious military men in oversized hats,” a lesson in boiling an egg, and “the vital importance of your hairstyle.”

That is the tone the trailer is selling: pomp, then slapstick, then a nightmare that will not stay in its lane. Neil Maskell is also in the cast. Christopher Ripley shot it, Fouad Gaber cut it, and Maxwell Sterling wrote the score. The countries have no names on purpose.

What the Twins Do After the Makeup Comes Off

The political logline is easy to repeat. The load-bearing choice is the casting. Hudson said identical twins were not a gimmick on top of the script. They are how the script works.

Casting identical twins in the lead roles was a really important part of the film. At first, they’re covered in prosthetics, and then we strip back all those layers, revealing something else: some truer sense of fraternity which, in my mind, is a parallel for what the film is trying to say about nationalism.

Oscar Hudson, writer-director, speaking in Venice

Tristan Versluis designed those prosthetics. Early on the brothers are buried in rival kit, faces built up so the audience has to hunt for the family resemblance. Then the layers come off, and the enemy is a sibling in a different hat. The Tittensors have both appeared in House of the Dragon. Here the job is closer to a magic trick than a prestige dual role: two bodies, one face, a fence that keeps losing its meaning.

Hudson put the same idea in plainer words. “This film is about nowhere and also about everywhere.” He said he wanted a void, so viewers would not drag in the flags they already hate or love. The twins make that void physical. If the makeup never came off, you would have a two-hander about boredom. Once it does, the border is a costume.

Hudson Shot for Seven Weeks in a Tented Camp

Hudson trained in social anthropology, then made low-budget videos in London. He directed Radiohead’s “Lift” in 2017, a 30-second “The Numbers” clip the year before, and work for James Blake and Bonobo. The Marrakech program notes a Primetime Emmy, a Cannes Lions Grand Prix, a UK Music Video Awards directing prize, and a Rotterdam audience award for a short.

HUDSON BEFORE THE FEATURE

• Radiohead: He directed the 2017 “Lift” video and a short “The Numbers” vignette.
• Ad and video circuit: Nike and Apple jobs sit beside the James Blake and Bonobo clips.
• Festival short: Joy in People played the BFI London Film Festival and won the audience award at Rotterdam.
• The leap: Straight Circle is the first feature, produced with BBC Film, Magna Studios, 2AM, and Such.

He did not treat the desert as a green-screen plate. The crew lived in a tented camp for seven weeks in the Kalahari, in South Africa, about three hours from the nearest village. Hudson said the usual debut advice is to set a film in one room, and that this is one room they had to travel a long way to find. “The landscape brings so much in terms of character,” he said.

The catalyst, he has said more than once, was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He still refused to pin the story to that war, or to any other. “I’m English. English people are unable to take serious things seriously,” he said. “Difficult subjects are perfect for making fun of.” He likes contrast the way the Pixies used loud and quiet, comedy that drops into something tragic without a warning card.

The Prize Stack From Venice to Taipei

Straight Circle premiered in the 40th Venice Critics’ Week in September 2025, in a seven-film debut competition, and left with the IWONDERFULL Grand Prize and the Verona Film Club Prize for Most Innovative Film, the second picked by a jury under 35. Hudson later said a youth jury at Isola Edipo added a third prize. The main jury, Valentina and Nicole Bertani, Nathalie Jeung, and Lee Hong-chi, called it a colorful, absurd black comedy that turns into a waking nightmare, and praised the two leads as impeccable.

Beatrice Fiorentino, artistic director of the sidebar, framed the debut as Beckett and Kafka, “Tati on acid,” Lynch writing from a warzone. Peter Bradshaw called it a boisterous, lively picture from a director to watch. Wendy Ide, after the London screening, wrote that the picture runs a little long and that the dialogue can feel superfluous, while still treating the film as a distinctive first feature.

THE PRIZES ON THE ROAD

Bong Joon Ho, president of the Marrakech jury, boiled his view down to “Fucking great,” a line now sitting on festival awards and key credits Hudson publishes himself. Julia Ducournau, on that same jury, called the film “a dizzying and deeply human experience.” The festival’s own account posted the Best Directing Prize handed on stage by Ducournau and Hakim Belabbes.

In Taipei the film played as Your Enemy Is Not Your Enemy and, on June 30, 2026, took the Grand Prize and a $10,000 cash award, plus the audience prize and the Taiwan Directors Guild Award. Ten films had been chosen from 430 submissions. Hudson said he was told it was the first clean sweep of all three, and joked on stage that he had been a little greedy. He also said prizes are not why you make a film, and that for an independent title they still change what happens next.

Between those podiums the film played Toronto, BFI London, AFI Fest, Sao Paulo, Denver, Seville, Goteburg, and Oostende. The circuit did the work a studio campaign usually does. The U.S. date still did not appear.

Joint Venture Is a New Studio With a Nationwide Plan

Joint Venture bought U.S. rights on January 20, 2026. Co-founders Vinay Singh and Jess Jacobs run a young indie studio that talks about bespoke theatrical plans rather than a standing release machine. Their other early title, If You See Something, followed the same pattern: buy a festival film, take it to theaters, build a coalition around it.

Oscar’s genius is creating a film that is simultaneously universal and painstakingly specific. Juxtaposing striking visuals with comic absurdity while maintaining a beautiful core of humanity, this is a singular film and impressive debut that brings to mind the masterful work of Jonathan Glazer, Claire Denis, and Spike Jonze.

Vinay Singh and Jess Jacobs, co-founders, Joint Venture

Those names are a positioning exercise. Glazer came out of music videos. Spike Jonze did too. Joint Venture is telling buyers to watch Straight Circle as that kind of jump, not as a modest British two-hander that got lucky in a sidebar. The production already had weight behind it: Kevin Rowe for 2AM, Thomas Benski for Magna Studios, Rik Green and Riaz Rizvi for Such, with BBC Film in the finance stack. Global Constellation handled sales. CAA helped close the U.S. deal.

FROM VENICE TO A TRAILER WITH NO FRIDAY

1. September 2025: Premieres in Venice Critics’ Week and wins the Grand Prize and Most Innovative Film.
2. October 2025: Plays BFI London, Toronto, and AFI Fest, then Denver at the end of the month.
3. December 2025: Takes Best Director and Best Actor in Marrakech.
4. January 20, 2026: Joint Venture acquires U.S. rights and promises theaters later in the year.
5. June 30, 2026: Sweeps the three Taipei new-directors prizes.
6. September 8, 2026: The official trailer and poster go out; no opening day is attached.

Hudson wrote in July that the festival run was ending and that U.S. and U.K. releases were “on the horizon,” with more details “very soon.” September arrived with a trailer instead of a Friday.

A Trailer Drops With No Day on the Calendar

The clip moved through film-news accounts on September 8 beside an official poster, the same hour, the same logline about isolation giving way to an outlandish nightmare. There was almost no argument under those posts, because there is still nothing to buy. A year after Venice, the campaign looks like a paste job, not a dated rollout.

Fall preview lists are already packed with sequels. Straight Circle is the first feature from a video director, built on two brothers in leftover war paint, and it already has Bong Joon Ho’s two-word review in the advertising. What it does not have is the ordinary thing a nationwide release needs: a day.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The running time: Marrakech lists the film at 108 minutes.
• The U.S. plan: Joint Venture will put it in theaters nationwide this fall.
• The engine: Identical twins start under prosthetics and are stripped back as the border collapses.
• The circuit: Venice, Marrakech, and Taipei all gave it their top prizes in this lane.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The Friday: No specific U.S. opening date has been announced.
• The U.K. day: Hudson flagged a home release on the horizon in July, with no calendar date since.
• The scale: “Nationwide” is the promise; the number of screens is not.

Joint Venture has the film for U.S. theaters this fall and has not named the Friday it opens. The twins are already in the poster. The date is not.