★★½☆☆
Teodora Mihai’s Heysel 85 captures the horrific events that unfolded at the beginning of the 1985 European Cup final. Mihai takes on the challenge of telling a true story, one that, given its historical significance, leaves little room for conventional dramatic framework.
Rather than approaching the material as a character-driven drama, Mihai adopts a more observational and informative style, incorporating documentary footage and positioning the film as a reconstruction of events rather than a narrative built around character and story.
With the focus placed almost entirely on the tragedy as it unfolds, there is little time spent establishing who these people are before the disaster, how they process the deaths around them, or how the experience ultimately changes them.
Isabelle Darras and Mihai’s script feels more concerned with the events themselves than with the people experiencing them.
This becomes apparent throughout the film. We are repeatedly told who the characters are through dialogue and introductions rather than learning about them through behavior, choices, and actions. As a result, many of the scenes feel more informative than immersive.
“Rather than shaping the historical events into a compelling dramatic narrative, the screenplay often settles for recounting the details of what happened.”
That approach carries over into Mihai’s direction. The tone remains muted throughout, offering little emotional perspective on the tragedy. While the pacing remains steady, the film often feels emotionally distant, as though it is documenting events rather than inviting the audience to experience them alongside its characters.
Marius Panduru’s cinematography follows a similar philosophy. Rather than using the camera to generate emotion, Panduru primarily uses it to establish tone and perspective.
Utilizing wide shots and loose framing, the visual language often resembles the detached perspective of a news broadcast more than that of a dramatic feature.
As a result, the newsreel footage and dramatized scenes frequently blend together. The camera rarely isolates characters in a way that deepens our connection to them, instead prioritizing the presentation of information over emotional intimacy.
The score similarly follows the film’s restrained approach, often blending into the background. Yet while the music remains understated, the sound design frequently takes center stage, creating some of the film’s most impactful moments.
When the sidewalk collapses, the sound mixing becomes genuinely memorable, recreating the chaos and panic of the moment with startling effectiveness.
It is one of the film’s most heartbreaking and terrifying sequences, capturing the scale of the tragedy in a way few other moments manage.
One scene in particular stands out. After witnessing someone being trampled, a cameraman is left grappling with the reality that he continued filming rather than intervening.
While the film depicts more than thirty deaths, this is one of the few moments that truly resonates emotionally because Mihai finally allows the weight of the tragedy to settle over the people experiencing it.
“For a brief moment, the film stops documenting the disaster and begins examining the human cost behind it.”
Violet Braeckman’s performance during this sequence is among the strongest in the entire film. As she comforts the cameraman and helps him process what he has witnessed, she reveals a level of depth and emotional complexity that much of the film only hints at.
While the scene showcases Braeckman’s range as a performer, it also highlights one of the film’s larger shortcomings.
Because so few of the surrounding performances are given similar opportunities for emotional exploration, many of the characters feel underdeveloped despite the gravity of the events unfolding around them.
In the end, Heysel 85 succeeds as a reconstruction of a devastating historical tragedy that claimed 39 lives. However, by prioritizing the details of the event over the people caught within it, the film ultimately plays more like a history lesson than a fully realized drama.
“By prioritizing the details of the event over the people caught within it, Heysel 85 ultimately plays more like a history lesson than a fully realized drama.”
Related Reviews
Memorizu Review: The Beauty of Paying Attention (Tribeca 2026)
Backrooms Review: The Mythology Is the Setting, the Characters Are the Story
IFFI 2026 Review: Chronicles From The Siege and the Memories Left Behind by War