X
- 2025
- Music Box Films
- 1 h 30 m
- 2025
- Music Box Films
- 1 h 30 m
Summary A young girl and her grandmother spend a summer on a small, uninhabited island in the Gulf of Finland.
Directed By: Charlie McDowell
Written By: Robert Jones, Tove Jansson
- 2025
- Music Box Films
- 1 h 30 m
- 2025
- Music Box Films
- 1 h 30 m
The Summer Book
62
User Score Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Where to Watch
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Summary A young girl and her grandmother spend a summer on a small, uninhabited island in the Gulf of Finland.
Directed By: Charlie McDowell
Written By: Robert Jones, Tove Jansson
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 9 Critic Reviews
62
56% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
44% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 9 Critic Reviews
62
56% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
44% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Sep 19, 2025
The Summer Book is a haiku of a movie, conveying profound thoughts about time, memory, loss, and nature through a simplified, meditative, cinematic language of exquisite images and gentle music.
Sep 18, 2025
Scanning the elder woman’s weathered visage and the grandchild’s open face as well as giving the island’s rocky, forested, mossy and watery environs their many close-ups, The Summer Book offers a loving portrait of budding and fading.
Sep 25, 2025
Nature may be healing, but too many static shots of it can drag an already slow movie out even more. Still, it’s not enough to detract from the moving performances of its three leads, who make The Summer Book well worth the watch.
By Flora Belle Farr FULL REVIEW
Oct 29, 2024
The film just lacks in, you know, tension, danger, build, and stakes, the hallmarks of dramatic narrative. It’s almost as though the word “mellifluous,” pertaining to Hania Rani’s score, was coined for this film.
Aug 30, 2025
Charlie McDowell makes an equally respectful and respectable stab at the task, capturing some of the wistful, soft-sun warmth of Jansson’s writing — though not quite matching its unassuming poetic depths.
Oct 21, 2024
The Summer Book as a whole proves much too programmatic (an early don’t-worry-it’s-nothing cough sets the tone) and much too fearful of leaving its audience in the dark about the characters’ emotional states (hence its symbolic clutter).
Aug 30, 2025
The earnestness slowly becomes suffocating, and Grandmother’s endless lessons grating. Yes, nature is the ultimate healer. And?
User Reviews
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Production Company
- Free Range Films
- Stille Productions
- High Frequency Entertainment
- Helsinki-filmi
- Case Study Films
- MUV Capital
- Finnish Impact Film Fund
- Mediefondet Zefyr
- Eye Eye Pictures
- Yleisradio (YLE)
- Hurst Capital
Release Date Sep 19, 2025
Duration 1 h 30 m
Genres
Awards
Miami Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
Munich Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
