When Academy Award–winning actor Kate Winslet (The Reader, Mare of Easttown) first read the script for the family drama Goodbye June, she knew she had to do more than just star in it: She had to direct it. 

The film, which arrives in select US and UK theaters Dec. 12 and on Netflix on Dec. 24, follows four adult siblings — played by Winslet, Golden Globe winner Toni Collette (Wayward), Academy Award nominee Andrea Riseborough (Matilda the Musical), and Johnny Flynn (Ripley) — who reunite when their lively mother, June (Academy Award winner Helen Mirren), faces a devastating health crisis. As June’s condition deteriorates, the siblings must confront complicated family dynamics and the impending reality of loss, while supporting their beleaguered patriarch Bernie (BAFTA Award–nominated Timothy Spall). Throughout her final moments, June remains the vibrant woman she is, embracing her family and her condition with biting humor, blunt honesty, and immense love and affection.

PHOTO BY KIMBERLEY FRENCH

PHOTO BY KIMBERLEY FRENCH

PHOTO BY KIMBERLEY FRENCH

Winslet, who makes her directorial debut with the film, was drawn to the universal story, scripted by Joe Anders, and its rich emotional truths about life, death, and connections. “It’s about the human condition. I hope that people will recognize themselves in the characters. It’s a film about family. Some of our most complicated relationships in life are with the people we love the most in the world, the people we are closest to, the people we need the most for support and care,” she says. “In the UK, we struggle when talking about death. The power of a good goodbye is to remember to love each other in the present.” 

PHOTO BY KIMBERLEY FRENCH

Winslet, who also produces the film with Kate Solomon (Lee), gathered a cast of both previous collaborators and actors she had long admired. She first performed alongside Spall when she was just 19 years old in a production of Hamlet, and she and her onscreen sister Riseborough, who plays exhausted stay-at-home mother Molly, recently co-starred in The Regime and Lee. Though she’d long admired her work, Winslet had never met Collette before casting her as the eccentric eldest daughter, Helen. She cast Flynn as the youngest and only brother, Connor, a misfit still firmly rooted in his parents’ nest. At the center of the sprawling family is June, a part Winslet says could only have been brought to life by Mirren, who portrays her character’s deteriorating condition with the utmost vulnerability. 

Take a look at the trailer for Goodbye June above.