Teodora Ana Mihai’s Heysel 85, a drama set around the 1985 European Cup final disaster in Brussels, had its UK premiere in the festival’s Thrill strand at BFI Southbank.
Heysel 85, Teodora Ana Mihai’s drama of the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, had its UK premiere at BFI Southbank on the South Bank on Thursday 15 October 2026. Violet Braeckman and Matteo Simoni lead the cast.
Mihai is a Belgian-Romanian director, born in Bucharest. She made her debut in 2014 with the documentary Waiting for August, nominated for a European Film Award.
Her first fiction feature, La Civil won the Prix de l’Audace in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2021. Her second, Traffic, won the Grand Prix in Warsaw and was Romania’s submission to the Academy Awards.
On 29 May 1985, before Liverpool met Juventus at the Heysel Stadium, 39 supporters died. Mihai leaves the match off screen and follows the hours around it through two invented figures.
The London screening was in the Thrill strand of the seventieth BFI London Film Festival. Icon Film Distribution brings it to British cinemas.
Braeckman plays Marie, the mayor’s daughter, and was named one of the year’s European Shooting Stars at the Berlinale, where the film had its world premiere in February. Simoni plays Luca, an Italian journalist, and Josse De Pauw plays the mayor.