How I Live Now

How I Live Now (2013) is Kevin Macdonald's drama starring Saoirse Ronan, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Daisy, a prickly teenager from New York, lands at her relatives' farmhouse in the English countryside and wants nothing to do with any of them.

With no adults really around, the place wears her down in a good way. Her cousins fold her into their world, and something sparks between her and the quiet eldest, Edmond (George MacKay). The summer feels like it could last forever. Then a bomb goes off in London, ash drifts down over the fields, and the country slides into a sudden new war. The kids are split up and shipped off, and Daisy sets out with young Piper to cross a militarized England on foot, walking back toward the house, toward Edmond, past checkpoints and emptied villages.

It comes from Meg Rosoff's award-winning young-adult novel. Macdonald, the director behind The Last King of Scotland, keeps the fighting mostly off-screen, letting the dread sit just past the frame while the real story stays on a girl growing up and what she'll risk for love. Tom Holland turns up in one of his early roles. Stream How I Live Now (2013) online on iFILM.