For Rona, played by Saoirse Ronan, it's alcohol, at least to begin with. For her mother, it's Christianity, and for her father, who oscillates between episodes of mania and depression, it's sheep farming,

Saoirse Ronan stars as Rona (an fictionalised avatar for Liptrot, who co-authored the screenplay with director Nora Fingscheidt), an Orkney Islander whose hedonistic student lifes

In 2016, Amy Liptrot made a fine publishing debut with a memoir about her alcoholism, The Outrun. Now she has co-written a film based on her book that is a significant achievement in its own right. It’s also the promising debut of Saoirse Ronan and her husband actor Jack Lowden as producers.

The Oscar nominee plays a woman who returns to her hometown of Orkney to get clean following years of excess in London

The Outrun follows Rona, a 29-year-old woman who moves back to her homeland in the Orkney Islands, in the north of Scotland, to deal with her troubled past. Over the last decade, she has been drowning in a pit of alcoholism, destroying every meaningful relationship and even endangering her own life.

An emotive turn from the Irish actor is matched by Nora Fingscheidt’s fluent direction while adapting Amy Liptrot’s memoir

Could this be Saoirse Ronan's year? With a career already full of fine performances and four Oscar nominations before hitting 30 — the first was at just 13 for her breakout in Atonement — it feels like she already has one of those gold statuettes.