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The new Heysel 85 trailer promises an intense historical drama about the 1985 stadium disaster, with Violet Braeckman and Matteo Simoni at the centre of a story about violence, responsibility and institutional failure.
Release: November 20, 2026, UK cinemas
UK Premiere: October 15, 2026, BFI London Film Festival
Director: Teodora Ana Mihai
Cast: Violet Braeckman, Matteo Simoni, Josse De Pauw, Fabrizio Rongione, Paolo Calabresi, Bobby Schofield, Ben Segers
Genre: Historical Drama, Political Drama, Sports
Runtime: Approximately 92 minutes
Distributor: Icon Film Distribution
The Heysel and Hillsborough Disasters: How Tragedy Shaped English Football from 1985
Heysel 85 Trailer Review: First Impressions
Some football films are designed to celebrate the sport. Others examine its politics, its culture or its extraordinary ability to bring people together. Heysel 85 belongs to a much darker category.
The newly released trailer immediately establishes that this is not going to be a conventional football movie. There is no attempt to romanticise the European Cup, turn the Liverpool-Juventus fixture into sporting nostalgia or make the tragedy feel like distant history. Instead, director Teodora Ana Mihai appears to be placing the audience inside the escalating tension surrounding one of European football’s most devastating nights.
The trailer’s greatest strength is its atmosphere. Rather than relying on conventional spectacle, Heysel 85 appears to build suspense through crowded spaces, increasingly chaotic movement, political arguments and the sense that something terrible is approaching but cannot be stopped.
That approach is consistent with the film’s reception at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival. Critics have highlighted Mihai’s combination of staged material and archival footage, with Variety describing the movie as a tense political metaphor and an anxiety-inducing example of cinéma vérité.
For a trailer, that is an encouraging sign. Heysel 85 does not need to manufacture suspense because the audience already knows what happened. Its challenge is to make viewers feel the uncertainty, confusion and institutional failure that surrounded the disaster.
And from the trailer, that appears to be exactly what Mihai is attempting.
What Is Heysel 85 About?
Heysel 85 revisits the events surrounding the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium on May 29, 1985.
The match was supposed to be one of European football’s biggest occasions. Instead, violence between supporters contributed to a catastrophe in which 39 people died.
Rather than telling the story exclusively through famous football figures or concentrating on the match itself, Mihai’s film follows fictionalised characters caught inside the wider crisis.
Violet Braeckman plays Marie, the daughter and press attaché of the Mayor of Brussels, while Matteo Simoni plays Luca, an Italian journalist whose professional assignment becomes deeply personal as the disaster unfolds.
That choice is particularly interesting.
It allows Heysel 85 to move beyond the question of what happened in the stands and examine the people attempting to understand, control and respond to the rapidly escalating situation.
The BFI’s description of the film makes this approach especially clear. Rather than simply reproducing the match, the film focuses on the ordeal experienced by fans and examines the pre-match planning, slow response and political manoeuvring surrounding the catastrophe.
That gives the trailer a very different tone from a conventional sports drama.
This is not a story about winning.
It is a story about what happens when institutions fail people.
Violet Braeckman Looks Like One of the Film’s Key Strengths
Violet Braeckman appears to have a particularly demanding role as Marie.
Her character occupies an uncomfortable position between political power and the human consequences of decisions being made around her. She is connected to the mayor but is also confronted with the consequences of the decisions being taken by people in authority.
That makes her more than a conventional protagonist.
The trailer suggests that Marie becomes a witness to a system struggling to react to a catastrophe that is moving faster than the people supposedly responsible for controlling it.
Braeckman’s performance was already singled out by critics following the film’s Berlin premiere. Variety’s review highlighted the performances of Braeckman and Simoni as committed portrayals of well-meaning people suddenly forced into morally complicated circumstances.
Braeckman was also selected as a European Film Promotion Shooting Star for 2026, adding another reason to watch her performance here.
The trailer certainly suggests that Heysel 85 could become an important showcase for her.
Matteo Simoni Brings a Journalist’s Perspective
Matteo Simoni’s Luca provides the film with another important perspective.
As an Italian journalist covering the event, Luca initially approaches Heysel as a professional assignment. But his connection to the supporters and the unfolding crisis makes it increasingly difficult to remain a detached observer.
This is an effective narrative device because journalism itself becomes part of the film’s examination of the disaster.
A journalist is expected to observe, report and communicate. But what happens when the situation becomes too chaotic for those conventional responsibilities to function?
The trailer appears to play with that tension.
Simoni has the difficult task of portraying somebody who is simultaneously inside the event and attempting to make sense of it. His performance therefore complements Braeckman’s rather than simply competing with it.
Together, Marie and Luca give the story two different routes into the same catastrophe.
The Trailer’s Most Effective Element: Dread
The most impressive aspect of the Heysel 85 trailer is arguably its ability to create dread without revealing everything.
Everybody watching already knows the historical outcome.
That creates a fascinating filmmaking problem.
How do you build suspense around an event whose ending is already known?
Mihai’s answer appears to be to focus on the minutes before disaster.
The growing crowd.
The tension between supporters.
The uncertainty among officials.
The arguments behind closed doors.
The increasingly frantic movement around the stadium.
The feeling that there should be somebody capable of stopping what is coming — but that nobody quite manages to do so.
Cineuropa’s Berlin review praised precisely this element of the finished film, noting Mihai’s emphasis on off-screen tension and the way sound design helps create the atmosphere of a disaster unfolding around the characters.
That is an intelligent approach because showing everything would potentially reduce the tragedy to spectacle.
Heysel 85 seems much more interested in making the audience feel trapped inside the circumstances.
A Football Film That Barely Needs Football
One of the most intriguing things about the trailer is how little emphasis appears to be placed on the actual football match.
That is deliberate.
The European Cup Final provides the historical setting, but the match itself is not the central drama.
The BFI notes that Mihai leaves the match off screen, concentrating instead on the ordeal of the fans and the failures surrounding the disaster.
That could initially seem strange for a film marketed partly through its connection to Liverpool and Juventus.
But artistically, it makes sense.
The football match is almost irrelevant compared with what was happening around the stadium.
The film is therefore less interested in who was going to win the European Cup and much more interested in why a football occasion became a mass-casualty event.
That distinction could make Heysel 85 much more powerful than a traditional sports drama.
The Archival Footage Could Make the Film Feel Uncomfortably Real
Another major attraction is the mixture of fictionalised drama and archival material.
According to festival and critical descriptions, Mihai integrates historical footage into the recreated sequences rather than treating the archive as a separate documentary component.
This technique can be extremely effective when handled carefully.
The audience knows that the archival images are real.
The dramatic scenes, meanwhile, allow the filmmakers to place fictional characters into the spaces between the historical record.
That combination can blur the boundary between reconstruction and documentary.
The result, judging from the trailer and the film’s early critical response, is likely to feel less like watching a conventional historical drama and more like entering a recreation of the atmosphere surrounding the disaster.
Why the Sound Design Could Be Crucial
Visually, the trailer is disturbing.
But sound may ultimately be the film’s secret weapon.
Cineuropa specifically praised the way Mihai uses sound to create tension, particularly by allowing the disaster to be felt beyond what the camera directly shows.
That is important because Heysel 85 does not appear interested in turning tragedy into graphic spectacle.
Instead, noise can become the representation of uncertainty.
Crowds become louder.
Voices become harder to distinguish.
Instructions become confused.
Officials argue.
People search for information.
And somewhere beyond the immediate frame, the situation continues to deteriorate.
That approach could make the film genuinely uncomfortable without requiring excessive visual violence.
A Story About Institutional Failure
The strongest thematic element in the trailer is arguably not football violence itself.
It is responsibility.
Who was responsible for stadium safety?
Who understood the danger?
Who had the authority to act?
Who hesitated?
Who attempted to shift blame?
And what happens when too many people assume that somebody else is in charge?
The film’s early reviews suggest that these questions are central to Mihai’s approach.
Cineuropa describes the catastrophe not simply as an unfortunate accident but as the result of multiple dysfunctions, while Variety’s review interprets the film as a broader metaphor involving political responsibility and institutional failure.
This makes Heysel 85 relevant beyond football.
The disaster happened more than four decades ago, but the themes of poor preparation, institutional complacency, political pressure and delayed responses remain disturbingly contemporary.
That is one reason the film could resonate with audiences who have little personal connection to the 1985 European Cup Final.
The Political Dimension Adds Another Layer
The inclusion of the Mayor of Brussels and his daughter allows the film to explore the political consequences of the disaster.
Josse De Pauw plays Mayor Marc Dumont, while Braeckman’s Marie works alongside him. The film consequently has access to the decision-making environment surrounding the stadium.
This is where Heysel 85 appears to move beyond straightforward historical reconstruction.
The film is asking not only what happened but how institutions behaved when confronted with an unfolding emergency.
That political dimension has been repeatedly noted by critics. The Upcoming described the film as a tense political metaphor for the consequences of indecision and blame.
For viewers expecting a conventional football movie, this may be the biggest surprise.
Heysel 85 is ultimately as much a political drama as it is a football tragedy.
The Trailer Does Not Feel Like a Traditional Sports Movie
There are no obvious signs that Heysel 85 wants to deliver the inspirational rhythms of films about football.
There is no triumphant sporting montage.
There is no heroic comeback.
There is no attempt to turn the stadium into a nostalgic playground.
Instead, the trailer creates a claustrophobic environment where the familiar ingredients of a major football occasion — flags, supporters, anticipation, rivalry and noise — gradually become threatening.
That transformation is perhaps the central visual idea of the film.
A football stadium is supposed to be a place of community.
On this particular night, it became something else entirely.
The trailer understands that contrast.
What the Trailer Gets Right
The biggest success of the Heysel 85 trailer is that it understands the difference between depicting tragedy and exploiting tragedy.
The subject matter is inherently sensational.
A major European football final.
Thousands of supporters.
Violence.
Political failure.
Thirty-nine deaths.
It would have been easy to construct a trailer around shock.
Instead, the marketing appears to emphasise atmosphere, character and responsibility.
That makes the film feel serious rather than sensationalistic.
The decision to focus on Marie and Luca is also smart because it gives audiences emotional anchors inside an enormous historical event.
Rather than trying to tell the story from every possible perspective, Mihai concentrates on individuals who are forced to make sense of an increasingly impossible situation.
Where the Trailer Raises Questions
There are, however, some reasons for caution.
The political material could potentially become overly explicit.
Variety praised the film’s intensity but also noted that some of its thematic material can become somewhat heavy-handed, particularly in scenes dealing with gender and institutional power.
Other reviews have similarly suggested that certain dialogue-heavy sequences can interrupt the momentum created by the more immersive disaster sequences.
That raises an interesting question for the full film.
Can Heysel 85 maintain the extraordinary tension of its central catastrophe while also developing its political arguments without becoming overly explanatory?
The trailer cannot completely answer that.
But the film’s strong festival reception suggests the balance is largely successful.
Heysel 85 UK Release Date
UK audiences will not have to wait much longer.
Heysel 85 will receive its UK premiere at the 70th BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2026, where it has been selected for the festival’s Thrill strand. It will then receive a UK theatrical release on November 20, 2026, through Icon Film Distribution.
The London premiere is particularly appropriate.
The film deals with one of the darkest episodes involving English football supporters, and its UK theatrical release comes during a period when football audiences remain intensely interested in questions surrounding stadium safety, supporter behaviour and the relationship between sport and politics.
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Final Verdict on the Heysel 85 Trailer
Trailer rating: 4.5/5
The Heysel 85 trailer is not easy viewing, and that is precisely why it works.
It presents a historical tragedy without turning it into football nostalgia or disaster spectacle. Instead, it promises a tense, intimate and politically charged drama about people caught inside a catastrophe that should never have been allowed to happen.
Violet Braeckman and Matteo Simoni appear to provide the emotional centre, while Teodora Ana Mihai’s combination of documentary aesthetics, archival imagery, handheld camerawork and escalating sound design gives the project a distinctive identity.
Most importantly, the trailer suggests that Heysel 85 understands what its story requires.
This is not really a film about a football match.
It is about the people who went to watch one.
It is about institutions that failed to protect them.
And it is about how quickly an occasion intended to celebrate football can become a tragedy that remains impossible to forget.
The early critical response from Berlin gives the film considerable credibility, while its selection for the BFI London Film Festival’s Thrill strand makes it one of the more intriguing UK releases of the autumn.
For football fans, history enthusiasts and audiences interested in serious political dramas, Heysel 85 looks like a film worth watching — although its subject matter means this is unlikely to be an easy cinematic experience.
Heysel 85 opens in UK cinemas on November 20, 2026.
