'Re-Creation' Review: Jim Sheridan Revisits a Haunting Case with a Bold, Fictional Verdict
Vicki Krieps In Jim Sheridan's Re-Creation' Tribeca
Justice isn't always found in court. Sometimes, it's found in conversation.
Jim Sheridan, the six-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, returns to Tribeca with arguably his most daring and experimental project to date: Re-Creation. This genre-defying film, co-directed and co-written with David Merriman, blends the conventions of courtroom drama, documentary filmmaking, and psychological study into a compelling hybrid. At its core, the film stages a fictional jury deliberation about the real-life 1996 murder of French documentary filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier—an unsolved case that has haunted Ireland and fascinated Sheridan for decades.
Drawing direct inspiration from Sidney Lumet’s classic 12 Angry Men, Sheridan invites the audience into a minimalist setting: a single jury room, where 12 actors—himself included—debate the guilt or innocence of British journalist Ian Bailey, the long-standing suspect in du Plantier’s killing. While Bailey was convicted in absentia by a French court in 2019, Ireland never extradited him, and he was never tried domestically. Bailey died in 2023 of a suspected heart attack, but Sheridan’s interest in the case remains fiercely alive, and this film serves both as a cinematic trial and a personal reckoning.
The brilliance of Re-Creation lies not just in its concept, but in its execution. The jury includes Vicky Krieps as Juror #8, who, mirroring Henry Fonda’s role in 12 Angry Men, opens the film with the lone “not guilty” vote. From there, what begins as a straightforward deliberation spirals into a tense psychological tug-of-war. Jurors challenge each other’s biases, question the media’s portrayal of the case, and interrogate the nature of circumstantial evidence. As with Lumet’s film, the dialogue reveals as much about the jurors themselves as it does about the accused. Yet here, Sheridan and Merriman break the mold, blending in moments of real investigative evidence, speculative arguments, and emotional memory work that shift the ground beneath the viewer’s feet.
Sheridan himself plays Juror #1, the foreman, a figure haunted not only by the murder but also by his own unresolved questions. He reveals that du Plantier had his phone number in her contacts, though he has no recollection of ever meeting her—a detail that underscores the surreal and often confounding nature of the case. This isn’t Sheridan’s first engagement with the material; he previously explored the same subject in his 2021 docuseries Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie. But Re-Creation is more urgent and more intimate, providing him a stage to interrogate the emotional weight of a case that has consumed his imagination.
The performances, largely improvised, are raw and occasionally chaotic, but intentionally so. Krieps commands attention, portraying a woman driven not by certainty but by moral intuition, willing to stand alone against collective consensus. John Connors gives a standout turn as one of the more combative jurors, using his character’s frustration and aggression to peel back the layers of truth that lie buried under years of media sensationalism and judicial indecision. Colm Meaney appears briefly as Ian Bailey, injecting the film with an uncanny ambiguity, portraying Bailey less as a character and more as a spectral presence—a ghost of what could have been justice.
Sheridan and Merriman structure the film around successive jury votes, each shift revealing deeper conflicts and reconsiderations. As tension builds, the film subtly critiques the assumptions we bring into deliberations, shaped by culture, gender, and personal experience. At its most electric, Re-Creation suggests that every verdict we reach—whether in courtrooms or living rooms—is shaped as much by who we are as by what we know.
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Yet the film is not without its challenges. Its improvisational nature can sometimes lead to uneven pacing or overly expository dialogue. Viewers unfamiliar with the du Plantier case may find themselves grasping at context, and the line between fact and fiction is often deliberately blurred, which might frustrate some. However, this ambiguity is precisely the point. Sheridan isn’t offering closure; he’s offering contemplation. He’s proposing that truth may lie somewhere between documentary and drama, between what we can prove and what we can’t let go.
What Re-Creation ultimately delivers is not a verdict on Bailey, but a cinematic invitation for collective introspection. It’s a film that urges us to slow down, to resist the seductive pull of certainty, and to wrestle with our own limitations in the pursuit of justice. For Sheridan, this is more than a film—it’s a deeply personal plea to reckon with unresolved pain. For the viewer, it is an opportunity to participate in a public conversation disguised as a private trial.
Re-Creation is not simply a film; it’s an act of catharsis. With its layered narrative structure, emotionally exposed performances, and daring fusion of truth and speculation, it stands as one of the most intellectually and emotionally provocative films at Tribeca 2025. It is a reckoning, a provocation, and—perhaps most importantly—a question left unanswered.
RATING: ★★★★☆
RE-Creation
Festival: (Spotlight Narrative)
Director-screenwriters: Jim Sheridan, David Merriman
Cast: Vicki Krieps, Colm Meaney, Aidan Gillen, John Connors, Jim Sheridan, Helen Norton, Maja Juric, Gilbert K. Johnston, Elena Spautz, Brendan Convoy, Zahara Moufid, Tristan Heanu, Claire Johnston-Cauldwell, Brian Doherty
Sales agent: Latido Films
Running time: 1 hr and 29 mins
