Ethel & Ernest · reception & legacy
2016 · Roger Mainwood
How Ethel & Ernest has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It slipped out quietly — a London Film Festival premiere and a BBC One slot between Christmas and New Year 2016 — and has since become a word-of-mouth treasure, passed around by animation fans as one of the decade's great underseen tearjerkers, with renewed attention after Raymond Briggs died in 2022.
What's debated
The recurring gripe among fans isn't about the film itself — it's 'why isn't this as famous as The Snowman?', the perennial case study in a masterpiece hiding in a TV schedule.
Its footprint
It sits in that beloved lineage of Raymond Briggs animations alongside The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, and circulates as a 'guaranteed cry' recommendation — the film people warn each other to bring tissues for.
Where it stands
A quiet Letterboxd favourite: beloved-but-underseen, the hidden gem of 2010s hand-drawn animation that reviewers ritually insist more people must watch.