Name: Above the Below
Genre: Thriller, Survival
Cast: Idris Elba, Caitlin FitzGerald, Hero Fiennes Tiffin

The first images Lionsgate has released from Above the Below work in two palettes. Inside the capsule the light is a flat, clinical red, and three astronauts sit strapped upright in their seats like figures in a reliquary. Outside there is only a slate-grey sea under low cloud, Idris Elba’s face barely clearing the waterline, the orange of his suit the last warm colour left in the frame. That slide from the controlled glow of a spacecraft into the cold, unlit weight of the ocean is the film’s premise in miniature, and Elba does not only star in it: he co-directs it.

The trailer is out from Lionsgate in English and from LEONINE Studios in a German-dubbed version, and the premise behind it is simple. Captain Jackson (Elba) and his crewmates Brooks (Caitlin FitzGerald) and Rhodes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) lose control of their capsule sixty miles above the Earth. Re-entry goes wrong, the craft slams into the open ocean and comes to rest on the seabed, cut off from mission control.

From there, the German distributor’s announcement stacks up the problems: no life vests, not enough oxygen, no prospect of a quick rescue, and water forcing its way into the damaged hull. Then Rhodes gets his foot trapped in a broken floor plate, which leaves Jackson and Brooks with the choice the story turns on: abandon their colleague and fight their way up through the dark to the surface, or try to free him before his air runs out.

Idris Elba, Caitlin FitzGerald and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as astronauts inside the capsule in Above the Below — Image: Lionsgate

Elba shares the director’s credit with Martin Owen, who also wrote the story; the screenplay is by Elizabeth Morris, Matt Mitchell and Vicki Sargent. It marks Elba’s return to feature directing after his debut, Yardie, in 2018. Lionsgate unveiled the project at the American Film Market in 2023, and the shoot ran from November 2023 to February 2024 at Pinewood Studios near London, where the production used the studio’s underwater stage.

That choice is visible in the stills. The underwater frames are almost black, lit just enough to catch a column of bubbles, the glint of a dive mask and the metallic folds of a pressure suit, so the actors seem to be swimming through ink. A survival thriller set inside a sealed metal shell lives or dies on how it handles light and water, and shooting in a real tank means at least some of what audiences see will be actual water on actual bodies.

Two astronauts in diving masks swimming through dark water in Above the Below — Image: Lionsgate

FitzGerald is best known for Masters of Sex and Fiennes Tiffin for Young Sherlock. Here they play the crewmates caught up in that dilemma, in a story about what three people owe each other when there is not enough air to go round.

Above the Below opens in US cinemas on December 4, 2026, through Lionsgate. In Germany, LEONINE Studios releases it a day earlier, on December 3, 2026.

For now, the strongest argument the film has made is that frame of the open sea: a man back from orbit, alone on a grey horizon, with nothing to hold on to but the water.

Tags: Idris Elba, Lionsgate, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, survival thrillers, Above the Below, Caitlin FitzGerald