Breaking and Entering 2018

Will Francis is a young English landscape architect in London, living a meticulously organized life beside his Swedish-American girlfriend Liv and her 14-year-old daughter Bea. Bea’s irregular sleep and eating patterns, coupled with her social awkwardness and single-minded love of somersaults and gymnastics, place a growing strain on Will and Liv’s relationship. The distance between them widens as Will watches Bea struggle to connect with others, and he begins to feel like an outsider in a family that isn’t technically his. They try relationship counseling, hoping to bridge the growing gap, but the drift between them stubbornly persists, casting a pale shadow over their daily routines and future plans.

Meanwhile, their architectural firm is the target of repeated burglaries by a group that speaks Slavic languages. A key weakness in the building’s alarm system hints at inside knowledge, and the thefts are carried out with the help of Miro, a 15-year-old traceur whose acrobatic skills make him a nimble and elusive intruder. Miro’s backstory reveals a refugee childhood from Bosnia and Herzegovina, living with his Bosnian Muslim mother Amira, who works as a seamstress, while his Serbian father was killed in the war. The burglars’ operation is not just a random crime spree but a desperate means of survival, a detail that begins to complicate Will and Liv’s sterile view of the thefts.

At first, Will and Sandy, his partner, dismiss the break-ins as the neighborhood’s rough reputation, but a second intrusion pushes them to stake out the building after hours. The nightly vigil unexpectedly aligns with Will’s own need to feel purposeful and in control, a counterweight to the emotional fog at home. It’s during these late-night stakeouts that Will crosses paths with Oana, an Eastern European sex worker who frequents the area, and a chance encounter leads him to follow Miro back to his modest home. Rather than report the break-in to the police, Will returns to Amira’s apartment under the guise of needing a suit mended, drawn by a growing curiosity and a sense of connection that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

As Will becomes emotionally entangled with Amira, the boundaries between personal longing and moral duty blur. The relationship with Liv continues to hover in the background, but Will’s fascination with Amira sparks a reevaluation of his own life, his loyalties, and what he’s willing to risk for a chance at happiness. The investigation closes in on the burglars, and Will faces a pivotal decision that could ripple through the lives of everyone close to him—from Liv and Bea to Amira and Miro. The film builds toward a difficult choice that tests how far one man will go when love, duty, and the truth collide, and it asks whether the pull of personal desire can ever be separated from the consequences it creates for the people around him.