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Saltburn poster

Film

Saltburn

Emerald Fennell · UK / US · 2023

Oxford, the mid-2000s. Oliver Quick, a quiet northern scholarship undergraduate from a modest family, is drawn into the orbit of his charismatic, beautiful and effortlessly aristocratic classmate Felix Catton. After a difficult turn at home, Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at Saltburn (the family's vast Northamptonshire estate) where he is introduced to Felix's parents, sister and resident American cousin, and quickly absorbed into a household that operates by its own rules.

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Emerald Fennell's Saltburn opened the Telluride Film Festival in August 2023 and screened in competition at the Toronto and London festivals before a wide release in November, the writer-director's second feature, following her Academy Award-winning debut Promising Young Woman (2020). The production is by Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley's LuckyChap Entertainment alongside Fennell's own Lie Still and MRC, with Amazon MGM as distributor. Principal photography ran for forty-eight days at Drayton House in Northamptonshire, the seventeenth-century Stuart-period country house standing in for the fictional Catton estate.

Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin) leads as Oliver Quick, with Jacob Elordi (Priscilla) as Felix Catton, Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant as Felix's mother and father, Alison Oliver as his sister Venetia and Archie Madekwe as the cousin Farleigh. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren (La La Land, No Time to Die) shoots the film in a 1.33:1 boxed Academy ratio on 35mm; the score is by Anthony Willis, with the soundtrack incorporating a strikingly literal late-2000s pop register.

Critical response was sharply divided (The Guardian and Empire were warm, while several US outlets pushed back on what they saw as a stylistic exercise) but audiences turned the film into the strongest UK-cinema opening for an Amazon-distributed feature. Keoghan was nominated for the BAFTA and Golden Globe for Best Actor, and Pike for Best Supporting Actress at the Globes; the film took six BAFTA nominations in total.

Streaming availability via JustWatch. Last checked 2026-05-11.

Barry Keoghan

Barry Keoghan

Oliver Quick

Jacob Elordi

Jacob Elordi

Felix Catton

Rosamund Pike

Rosamund Pike

Elspeth Catton

Richard E. Grant

Richard E. Grant

Sir James Catton

Alison Oliver

Alison Oliver

Venetia Catton