Hold Onto Me Film Review: A Fragile Bond

Hold Onto Me captures the hardships of childhood and parenthood in a visually driven, maturely emotional feature film debut from Myrsini Aristidou.

The story is about 11-year-old Iris (Maria Petrova), who lives with her single mother and brother in a Greek town filled with opportunities for trouble. When her grandfather passes away, it brings her estranged, underhanded, nomad-like father Aris (Christos Passalis) into town.

Though this father and daughter initially have no intention of reuniting, circumstances slowly bond them together in ways they never knew they needed. And with stories like this about estranged parents, you probably have some expectations in mind, such as the mother telling the child to stay away, the father’s defenses slowly lowering, or the big blowup that threatens to undo all the emotional progress made. While those tropes are present, Hold Onto Me shows a great understanding of the realities that spawned them in the first place.

This is a very visually driven film. I don’t take offense to certain things being a bit spelled out in movies, but Hold Onto Me is so subdued with its details that it often feels like you’re just watching real people. If you miss a few lines or fail to connect a couple of dots early on, you may not even realize that Aris is Iris’s father right away based on how they address and act around each other. Not only does that add to the naturalistic writing, but it establishes the distance between these two in a wholly organic way, allowing their chemistry to evolve as they grow closer.

Aris is clearly not the most clean-cut person, given his penchant for petty crimes and manipulative swindling. The way he and Iris start to reconnect is by him roping her into these schemes and her slowly becoming more okay with it. It’s not the most wholesome of relationships, but they’re not always the most wholesome of people. Iris herself is a troublesome kid from the start, having grown up in a place where it’s easy to fall into the wrong crowds, and her mother isn’t always a very responsible or even affectionate guardian to her on top of that.

Hold Onto Me is a very sweet, sentimental film, but in its own way that’s fittingly rough around the edges. It captures the frustrations that any kid like Iris would have so believably, including through Maria Petrova’s steely yet vulnerable performance. So much of the movie is on her shoulders, and she joins a list of great child actors who fully succeed with such a burden. The cinematography from Lasse Ulvedal Tolbøll also blends its overall close, intimate framing with frequent looks at Iris’s direct point of view, putting you right in the shoes of a scrappy child in this big, confusing world.

But it’s Christos Passalis who comes out as the biggest standout. He gives a hardened, understated performance of a complex and troubled man who still has the spark of love deep within him. Even a simply good performance could have made this feel a bit clichéd and “movie-like,” but he is so scarily fantastic at nailing all his character’s little subtleties, making his few moments of more upfront emotion that much more potent.

I was a little surprised when the film dipped slightly into thriller territory near the end, but it works perfectly well because it’s firmly woven into the emotional payoff. There are consequences for certain ways this father and daughter try to coexist together, but they’re only outmatched by newfound resilience and dedication. Does that mean they should keep sticking together? That’s left for you to decide as the film sends you out with a very touching final image that, like the rest of the visuals, says so much more than any dialogue could.

Hold Onto Me only sags in the middle, and even then, it’s not that much. It just loses some of the momentum it had previously maintained before finally getting it back. Overall, this is a great debut feature film, even though I know it’s going to get overlooked by some of the bigger movies coming out of Sundance. That’s just an inevitability when so many great films are competing. But if you have room for it, and you want to see a small, touching, maturely tough story about childhood and parenthood, this will surely hold onto your attention once it has it.

Hold Onto Me (Κράτα Με) had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2026 and will be screened again on January 27-30.