Nicolas Winding Refn is finally headed back to movie theaters. “Her Private Hell,” the filmmaker’s first feature in a decade, will open July 24, 2026, via Neon after making its world premiere Out of Competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month.
The Cannes return is not a small piece of the story. The last time Refn brought a feature to the festival was “The Neon Demon” in 2016, a Competition title that split the room, provoked walkouts, and kept the Danish filmmaker’s reputation as one of contemporary cinema’s more reliable provocateurs intact. Since then, he has largely worked in series, making Amazon’s “Too Old To Die Young” and Netflix’s “Copenhagen Cowboy,” both of which pushed his narcotic pacing and neon violence into longer, stranger shapes.
“Her Private Hell” brings him back to the feature format with a cast led by Sophie Thatcher (“Heretic,” “Yellowjackets”), Charles Melton (“May December,” “Warfare”), Kristine Froseth (“How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” “Sharp Stick”), and Havana Rose Liu (“Bottoms,” “No Exit”). Dougray Scott (“Mission: Impossible 2,” “Ever After”), Diego Calva (“Babylon,” “On Swift Horses”), Aoi Yamada (“Perfect Days,” “First Love”), Shioli Kutsuna (“Deadpool 2,” “Murder Mystery”), and Hidetoshi Nishijima (“Drive My Car,” “Shin Ultraman”) also star.
The film follows a woman searching for her father as a strange mist engulfs a city and unleashes an elusive, deadly presence. Refn has described the movie in characteristically blunt terms as “glitter, sex, and violence,” which sounds less like a pivot than a re-entry point: the filmmaker returning to the big screen with the same appetites, now after years of stretching them across streaming canvases.
Neon’s July 24 date also gives the film a pointed summer slot, arriving one week after Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and one week before “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” In a season crowded with branded spectacle, “Her Private Hell” will offer something harder to market and easier to recognize, a Nicolas Winding Refn movie.
“Her Private Hell” opens in theaters July 24, 2026, via Neon.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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