“I’m Always Drawn To Characters Who Aren’t Black and White”: Fionn Whitehead On His Sublime New Indie Flick, Satisfaction

From the pure shores of Antiparos to the hot pink premiere of BFI Flare, the English actor chats with Man About Town for a reflection on Satisfaction, finding humanity within the harm of a fractured love story.

Steadily building a reputation in recent years as a poster boy for emotionally rich epics and Brit TV dramas, English actor Fionn Whitehead has struck gold again with his latest dive into independent cinema. Breaking through on the beaches of Normandy as Tommy, the lead in Christopher Nolan’s illustrious Dunkirk, Whitehead soon enough shocked the world as the star of Netflix’s interactive standalone Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. In 2023, he took on another main role in Charles Dickens’ classic orphan Pip for Olivia Colman-backed six-part series Great Expectations.

Premiering at BFI Flare 2026, marking 40 years of London’s leading LGBTQIA+ film festival, Satisfaction is the first-time narrative feature debut of filmmaker Alex Burunova. Moving between timelines in hazy London and the stunning sun-soaked landscape of Greece’s Antiparos, the film follows British composer couple Lola (Emma Laird) and Philip. We slowly but surely come to observe them as players in a weighted game of unspoken truths, a romance under threat of dissolution. So very tense and utterly compelling is the conducting of a fragile dynamic, beginning to splinter further into a symphony of white noise on the remote island.

Whitehead shares the screen with The Brutalist’s Laird, having recently made an appearance in cinemas as the Jimmima to Jack O’Connell’s Jimmy Crystal. Without spoiling much, together, they are a tour de force, leaning into slowness and stillness. Allowing gestures and glances to choreograph their every discomforting move. There is a painterly quality to Whitehead’s ability to linger in the background of lively atmospheres; he is the spirit of all that is unhealthy. Shot independently on a modest budget with an intimate cast and crew, Buronova’s quietly devastating direction invites us to contemplate the unspoken, question every decision, and shout at the screen if compelled to.

In something far different from the IMAX 70mm calling of his earliest days, Fionn Whitehead joins Man About Town for impassioned words on Satisfaction, and his drive for difficult work.

Fionn, congratulations on premiering Satisfaction at BFI Flare 2026! This is a deeply personal debut feature from Alex Burunova. What was it like working with a director who drew so much from her own experiences?

It was amazing working with Alex. I think she’s been working on the script for a long time before we actually got to film it, so she had such an in-depth understanding of it, and was able to just help us wherever we needed.

How about the brilliant Emma Laird, your other half in the film?

It was brilliant, yeah, I had a really good time with Emma. I think it’s important when you’re filming something that could be quite dark, I mean, that has quite heavy subject matter, you must trust the person you’re working with. We were able to alleviate some of that heaviness by having a good time in between takes; we really got on.

Disclaimer for those eager to see Satisfaction: it does contain scenes of sexual violence.

We talked about it all, long before we got to filming that scene. That was actually the last scene that we filmed, of the whole shoot, so we had a long time to prepare for it. Anytime there was a really heavy scene to shoot, which was quite a lot of the film, Emma and I checked in with each other a lot and made sure that the other one was okay. We’d go for dinner and whatever after, just sort of to come back to Earth a bit.

We went to Athens first for a week, and so we had a week to get to know each other and rehearse and bond a bit. The first place we filmed was on the island, on Antiparos, and any downtime I basically spent in the sea. We explored a little bit, and the beaches are just stunning. The water’s like, crystal clear. I became quite friendly with the prop department. Shout out to Efthimis [Soukas] and all his crew.

Satisfaction was made independently with a small international crew from Ukraine, Hungary, Greece, and the UK. Did you find there was more creative freedom or experimentation during filming, as opposed to the large-scale productions of Dunkirk and Black Mirror, for instance?

Yeah, I think that anything you film, the feeling, the vibe on set, is completely dictated a lot of the time by the creatives around you. Whether it be a big studio film or a more intimate indie film, there are directors who work more in a studio capacity that are able to create a much more intimate feel on set. But when you are filming a smaller budget, kind of indie, there sometimes can be fewer cooks, I guess. So it’s amazing to feel very collaborative and to feel like you’re working together towards something.

In Satisfaction, during a flashback of subtle brewing romance, Philip shows Lola how to cook and cut vegetables like a pro. Are you a foodie at all?

I love cooking. I’ve got really into cooking, I’d say, in the last six years. My go-to dish, it changes all the time. I’d say at the moment, probably puttanesca.

Did you become a connoisseur of Greek cuisine while shooting in Antiparos?

The food in Greece is amazing, especially on Antiparos; it’s so fresh. I think it’s really hard to get good Greek food outside of Greece. When we were there, I was just enjoying the fresh seafood mainly. You’d be in a restaurant, and they would literally have lines out in front of you. Then you’d ask what the fish of the day is, and they’d shout to the fishermen, and then the fishermen would shout back. So you’d be getting it pulled straight out of the water and cooked on your plate.

Your appetite for acting has allowed us to be graced by your on-screen presence in all manner of Byzantine roles. How has your approach evolved over the years?

I’ve always sort of just taken it a role at a time. I’ve never really had an itinerary of the things I want to tick off. I think I’m always more drawn to the writing and creatives. So just to keep trying to play complex individuals, I suppose. My favourite films are the ones that are unflinchingly honest in their portrayal of humans, and their capacity to do good and bad things, and all the emotions that come with that.

The film explores identity, power dynamics, and healing after trauma as major themes. How did you find balance in portraying Philip’s humanity while still confronting the harm within his relationship with Lola?

That is what drew me to the character. He is written with so much humanity, despite the very traumatic things that happen within it. I’m always drawn to characters who aren’t black and white. I don’t think that humans are black and white; I think we are all kind of grey. We are all capable of good and bad, even people who have committed the worst acts are still capable of good, capable of love, and still have colours of all sorts of different things, are still human. When we were filming a lot of the scenes set in Greece that are a lot heavier, it was really trying to fight against it just being this completely loveless relationship, and try to pick out the moments of tenderness between the two of them.

One of the things I found really interesting about the script is the sort of shift halfway through. When it opens, I think a lot of the audience will be quite sympathetic towards Philip. When we were filming and when we were rehearsing that, the thing that all of us – me, Alex, Emma – thought was really important was to be clear that there was love in their relationship at some point, and that even maybe there still was. The care between the two of them, the fact that Philip really does care for Lola, and Lola really does care for Philip, that was really important.

Alex heavily embraces moments where silence and body language can be far more effective at communicating emotional shifts than dialogue interaction.

Yeah. I think that silence and embracing silence when you’re making a film is really important, and it can be just as important as dialogue-heavy scenes. We’d do multiple variations of scenes, kind of almost as an exercise more than anything. We would do scenes that stuck pretty directly to the script, and then we would do scenes that Alex gave us more scope to improvise and play with. Sometimes we would do a take of the scene in silence.

Both Philip and Lola are composers, and music is very central to their connection. Did you do any preparation to understand the mindset of musicians creating together?

Yeah, we did some piano lessons together, and while we were in London, we got to meet with a composer who had studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He took us around the space at Guildhall, then we just sort of picked his brains, really. About what it was like to be a composer, how he thought about things. I guess the really clear thing was obviously just the passion that he had for it and the love for it. The way that music runs through everything, when you are that sort of obsessed with it.

What’s one song that perfectly describes Philip?

You know what, I made a playlist. So when we filmed it, I was listening to some classical composers, and then more modern ones. I was listening to a lot of Oliver Leith. I listened to the Honey Siren: I., II., and III. I was looking at songs just in general, maybe not necessarily to describe Philip, but just songs, a playlist for him, basically. When I played them for the first time, I found them extremely moving.

As someone who values physical media, and with projects like Bandersnatch disappearing from streaming platforms, how do you feel about the risk of media becoming disposable or even lost?

The media has become so much more instantly accessible, which is both a positive and a negative. The positive is that it means that huge swathes of people who would never before have been exposed to certain types of media, whether it’s film, TV, art, or music, can now have access to it. That is always going to be a good thing because art should be for everyone. It shouldn’t be for a select number of people or for people who can afford it; it should be made readily accessible to everyone.

The flip side of that is that because it is so accessible to a lot of people, and so instantly accessible, sometimes people can take it for granted. I remember my family, we had a Lovefilm subscription for a little while. Blockbuster was the most amazing place to me. When we would rent a DVD or a VHS, the build-up to it, the excitement to it, and the sitting down to watch it and switching everything off, just completely immersing yourself in that, was such an exciting experience. I would hate for that to be lost, but times are changing, and it’s kind of unavoidable.

If audiences misunderstand your character in Satisfaction, what do you hope they still take away?

There are multiple things to take away from this. One thing, I believe that there needs to be more open conversation about consent, in general, from a young age. So that there’s not as much embarrassment, I guess, around talking about that stuff. I think there’s been a lot of massive strides made towards that in the past few years, but there’s obviously still a long way to go. The other thing is people not being defined by the things that have happened to them. Being able to take control of their own life and to build their life in whatever way they want, despite the things they’ve been through.

Satisfaction is screening at BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, which runs from 18–29 March. Tickets here.