Variety's Guy Lodge reviews "Learning to Breathe Under Water," the second feature from British director Rebekah Fortune, which premiered warmly in the Special Screenings sidebar at the Karlovy Vary festival. The film takes real-life inspiration from Oxford's Headington Shark — a fibreglass sculpture installed in 1986 as protest art against nuclear warfare — and reimagines it as the emotional centrepiece of a fictional story about grief and healing. The review is broadly positive, praising the film as a likeable, heart-on-sleeve crowdpleaser likely to appeal to indie distributors seeking family-friendly fare.

The story follows Peter (Rory Kinnear), a middle-aged, depressed widower and artist who installed the shark sculpture through the roof of his home in an Irish town, and his earnest eight-year-old son Leo (newcomer Ezra Carlisle), who confides his secret thoughts into the sculpture's belly. Their quiet life shifts when a cheerful Bulgarian au pair, Anya (Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova), moves in, gradually drawing both father and son back towards the world. Lodge singles out 11-year-old Irish actor Carlisle's unaffected performance as the film's highlight, and commends Richard Brabin's script for favouring incremental, credible emotional growth over pat solutions, while noting the film occasionally relies on visual shorthand and cuts corners.