Fun and stylish new movie with 85% on Rotten Tomatoes available to watch now

Featuring an excellent lead performance by a pop star, the film may be only a breezy 71 minutes long, yet it lingers with the viewer long after.

With its title meaning "eruption" in Polish, the movie is set in Warsaw, where the London-based Bethany (Charli XCX) and her long-term boyfriend, Rob (Will Madden), have decided to spend a weekend.

Bethany hasn't revealed to Rob that she has a bizarre connection with the Polish city. Every time she has visited it, starting from a school trip as a teen, a volcano erupts somewhere in the world.

As the ash from these eruptions often leads to flight cancellations, Bethany has actually spent a lot of time in Warsaw. In fact, one of her best friends, Nel (Lena Góra, The Eastern Gate), works as a florist there.

Bethany and Rob had initially planned a flying visit to Warsaw, during which the latter was hoping to make a proposal for marriage.

Mount Etna does indeed erupt, however, and the two are stuck in the city. Bethany, not sure about her future with Rob, uses the extra days from the travel delays to reconnect with Nel, choosing the florist's company over her boyfriend's.

Watch the trailer for Erupcja right here:

Just 71 minutes long, Erupcja is a breezy, low-key comedy-drama that nevertheless hooks viewers in, perhaps on account of its unorthodox production.

Directed by indie darling Pete Ohs (who wrote the 2026 sci-fi OBEX), the movie was made on a reported budget of only around $92k. It was also shot in a guerrilla style, where Ohs and his actors would write scenes and dialogue on the day of filming (indeed, Charli XCX, Góra, Madden, and their co-star Jeremy O. Harris are credited as co-writers).

In fact, Ohs has explained in interviews that the "beginning of the conversation" for Erupcja was just: “One character speaks Polish. One character doesn’t. There’s something about volcanoes.”

The loose, improvisational, mumblecore-esque nature of the filmmaking gives the project a real authenticity and naturalism. It's less like the viewers are witnessing movie stars playing characters onscreen, and more like we're eavesdropping on real people having conversations and believable existential crises.

It's also one of the few films we've seen that captures the feeling of what it's like to holiday in a foreign city, particularly in a more modern, interconnected world of Airbnbs and Google restaurant reviews.

What's really impressive, given what Ohs says about Erupcja's genesis, is how rich the movie feels thematically and how seamlessly its narrative threads come together in the end. The power of a volcanic eruption is a striking motif, possibly serving as a metaphor for several different things.

Does it represent how Bethany's frustrations and fears about her relationship with Rob finally rise to the surface during this trip to Warsaw? Does it represent how Bethany unexpectedly bursts back into Nel's life, causing her to rethink her very ordered existence?

Are volcanic eruptions simply a metaphor to represent fate and forces beyond our control? Or are eruptions just a regular occurrence on Earth onto which Bethany and Nel have applied their own personal significance?

The beauty of Erupcja is that all, some, or none of this could be the case.

While this may all sound highfalutin, Ohs and the cast infuse the material with a welcome dose of wit. It's just fun to watch Bethany and Nel reconnect and have adventures in Warsaw.

The story also goes in unexpected directions that feel true to life. For instance, Rob is revealed to be more complicated and likeable than Bethany's initial assessment of him as safe and boring. Plus, the couple's relationship issues may actually end up having a positive knock-on effect for some other characters.

After her mockumentary The Moment earlier this year, Erupcja is further proof that Charli XCX has real dramatic chops. That said, Lena Góra does steal the show, with her character, Nel, actually proving to be the beating, stable heart of the film.

Erupcja is in cinemas now.