‘Caravan’ Review – A Long Road To Understanding [Cannes 2025]

I cannot count the number of times I have seen a mother or a father with a child acting up and thanked my lucky stars that I have not ever signed on for that kind of responsibility. This is compounded when the child has any sort of disability that makes behavior an extra struggle. I sometimes wonder how parents in that situation stay so calm and measured. The truth is, of course, that they don’t. Not always, at least. In part, this is what director Zuzana Kirchnerová is hoping to explore in Caravan, premiering at Cannes Un Certain Regard.

The narrative is supremely impacted by Kirchnerová’s life experience as the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, and it is filmed in such a way that it removes most of the artifice of feature filmmaking. This is a film that throws you immediately into the relationships without much, if any, background or context. Quickly, we follow Ester (Ana Geislerova), who is the sole caretaker of her 15-year-old son, David (David Vodstrcil), who has Down Syndrome and continually struggles with behavioral outbursts when frustrated. These moments of lashing out immediately put us in Ester’s corner, especially after her friends, with whom she is visiting, ask them to stay in the caravan outside to avoid future incidents and further injury.

Geislerova is good throughout, but especially in these quiet moments. We see her desperation, her sense of being trapped in her own life. So much so that when she takes the caravan, we barely blink despite the fact that it is not her property. Raising a child with different needs is difficult in the best of circumstances, but given that she is a single mother, it puts things in a new and worse perspective. From there, sadly, the film becomes pedestrian. It is a road movie, for better or worse. However, it does receive a much-needed boost from Zuza (Juliana Brutovska) whom they pick up on their travels.

Given David’s consistent (and understandable) struggles, some of his interactions with Zuza border on inappropriate; he is, regardless of diagnosis, still a teenage boy. Zuza serves a dual purpose, she is the object of David’s affection and a strange sort of North Star for Ester. Ester is dying to lash out, to be something more than a struggling single mother. The problem becomes the predictability of the narrative. If you have ever seen a road movie, you can feel the problems and the solutions (such as they are) coming from miles down the highway. The narrative structure is meandering, which could be fine if there were more points of interest. When you have one character who is mentally struggling and another who tends toward silence, a film can slow down just a bit too much. With Brutovska being the force of nature pushing Caravan forward, it unfortunately becomes a bit of a slog. The screenplay, from Kirchnerová, documentarian Tomás Bojar, and Kristina Majova, focuses too much on stops that the crew make rather than the relationships that are being built mile by mile.

As a pure exercise in understanding a woman who wants something more, something different, the film works perfectly well. But as a film in regards to structure, it creates a sense of impatience that is nearly impossible to shake. However, the directors of photography, Denisa Buranová and Simona Weisslechner, repeatedly steal the show. As any decent road movie should, Caravan features many vistas that will take your breath away. Does it help that the film was shot in Calabria and Emilia-Romagna? Of course, but the work from this pair of cinematographers outshines the natural beauty. Frankly, there is a lot to like about the film. The three lead performances, the desire to be more, freedom as a concept vs as a reality; all of these ideas come shining through, but the work that the audience needs to do makes Caravan a slight struggle. It is a film that seems better looking back than it is during the process, which one could argue is the experience of a road trip, as well.

Caravan held its World Premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Director: Zuzana Kirchnerová

Screenwriters: Zuzana Kirchnerová, Tomás Bojar, and Kristina Majova

Rated: NR

Runtime: 102m