100 Nights of Hero: Candles, Cloaks and Cad Behaviour? (fantasy film: trailer)

Here’s one for the lovers of moonlit mischief and terrible husbands: 100 Nights of Hero is wafting in on a velvet breeze, a historical fantasy romance where fidelity tests meet folktales and the patriarchy gets a polite kicking in brocade slippers. Julia Jackman adapts Isabel Greenberg’s much-loved graphic novel (itself a sly riff on One Thousand and One Nights) and lines up an exceedingly handsome triangle: Maika Monroe as Cherry, the wife parked for a hundred days by Amir El-Masry’s blithely neglectful Jerome, while Nicholas Galitzine’s dangerously charming Manfred lurks like a well-cheekboned storm cloud. Enter Emma Corrin as Hero, the maid whose loyalty, cunning and storytelling make the difference between doom and… well, better stories.

The trailer promises exactly the cocktail you’d hope for: candlelit conspiracies, paper-theatre moons, and the kind of whispered plotting that suggests everyone’s read the same fairy tale and decided to write a better ending. Corrin looks to be in their element as a trickster-guardian, deflecting lechery with wit, while Monroe threads vulnerability with steel. Galitzine, meanwhile, gives great rake; he arrives swanning about like trouble set to a waltz. El-Masry’s Jerome radiates that special period-drama energy of a man who thinks vows are a one-way street and consequences are for peasants.

Supporting delights abound. Felicity Jones voices the Narrator—also “Moon,” because naturally the Moon has opinions—and Richard E. Grant turns up as “Birdman,” which, given the beaked brothers on the cast list (Christopher Fairbank, Josh Cowdery), suggests an avian motif and at least one masquerade you wouldn’t wear near a skittish horse. Charli XCX pops in as Rosa, presumably to cause stylish bother. Safia Oakley-Green, Markella Kavenagh, Varada Sethu, Tom Stourton and others round out a company that appears perfectly game to speak in riddles and stab in metaphors.

Visually, this has a cut-paper storybook charm—Xenia Patricia’s cinematography leans into silhouette and shadow, like Lotte Reiniger met a Pre-Raphaelite after midnight. Oliver Coates scores it all with strings that twang like tightened heartstrings, edited by Amélie Labrèche and Oona Flaherty with the kind of rhythm that makes a whispered secret feel like a drumbeat. If the trailer’s anything to go by, Jackman’s gone for romance as resistance: stories told to survive, and kisses stolen under the nose of convention, which is very much our idea of a good time.

Premiering in Venice’s Settimana Internazionale della Critica on 6 September 2025 and bowing as the Closing Night of the BFI London Film Festival, this is staking its claim as an awards-season dark horse with feathers in its mane. The U.S. release lands 5 December 2025 via Independent Film Company; UK & Ireland will follow in early 2026 with Vue Lumière, giving British audiences just enough time to purchase an unreasonable number of embroidered cloaks.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we’re always suckers for a tale where clever women outwit daft men by turning narrative into a weapon. If your idea of romance involves promises kept, stories sharpened, and a maid who could out-Scheherazade Scheherazade before breakfast, then brew the tea, dim the lamps, and enjoy the trailer. It looks like a hundred nights you won’t want to skip—especially if you fancy seeing a caddish plan undone by candlelight and a well-deployed parable.