THE GOLDEN SPURTLE: Wholesome Porridge Contest Documentary Is One of the Year’s Best Films

Stir the porridge clockwise, or else you’ll let the devil in. At least, that’s what they say in The Golden Spurtle, a new Australian documentary about the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship. The competition takes place every year in the sleepy, quaint village of Carrbridge, situated on the River Dulnain at the doorstep of the Scottish Highlands, and invites porridge-makers from all across the world: from England, Zimbabwe, even Australia. The rules of the contest are simple: Cooks can only use oats, water, and salt to prepare traditional Scottish porridge. They have 30 minutes to make their porridge.

While the documentary begins as a quirky window into this unusual village tradition, it quickly takes on poetic dimensions, as the best documentaries do. Once you settle into the quiet rural rhythms of Carrbridge, it’s easy to get swept up in the documentary’s small pleasures, its subjects’ minor victories and heartbreaks. Like any documentary worth its salt about Scotland, The Golden Spurtle is about this country’s rugged charm and windswept beauty. It’s also about finality and the endings of things. And, of course, it’s about porridge.

High-Stakes Porridge-Making

Like a serious follow-up to Christopher Guest mockumentaries Best in Show or A Mighty Wind, The Golden Spurtle follows a cast of colorful characters engaged in dubious competition. It bears a twinkle of the absurd, for sure, as we see the passion these cooks have for simple porridge. Rivalries sizzle, old victors return, green newcomers try to hold their own, and the porridge flies — metaphorically, that is. It all amounts to a great deal of drama for such a small town and inauspicious cooking competition, however improbable that might seem at first glance. As the cooks repeat time and again, proper Scottish porridge is only oats, water, and salt — how dramatic could it possibly get? But indeed, one of the greatest feats director Constantine Costi achieves is making this wholesome, friendly contest feel like a genuinely high-stakes event.

Costi (an opera director before he became a documentarian) might be Greek-Australian by birth, but few films capture Scotland quite as poetically as this one. He and cinematographer Dimitri Zaunders lovingly photograph the environment of Carrbridge, from the abandoned stone bridge the town is named after to the village’s rainy streets and the mountains in the distance. Editor James Alcock finds a charming rhythm to Carrbridge’s small-town life, cutting from one dollhouse-like wide shot to the next. In the color grade, the town feels calm and blue. Interiors are usually underlit, with Zaunders and Costi emphasizing the real, lived-in quality of their settings.

Chieftain of the Golden Spurtle

The star of The Golden Spurtle is Charlie Miller, a mild-mannered Scotsman who has organized the competition since the beginning. 2023, when the project was shot, is his final year as Chieftain of The Golden Spurtle. Through Miller, we see the great effort that goes into planning the deceptively simple event, which has become much bigger than the humble Carrbridge community hall can handle. He provides in-the-know commentary on each of our primary porridge chefs. But he’s also ready for retirement, and some of the film finds Miller musing on his life and his inevitable death. The film’s most profound moment comes when Miller looks out the window, pondering the mountain summits surrounding his town that he has never climbed.

Like many shots in The Golden Spurtle, that one is framed with Miller in the lower third of the frame, the mountains visible in the distance through a window. Zaunders cleverly shoots much of the film this way — with inventive framing, excellent use of negative space, and a love for frames within frames. Each shot is intelligently and thoughtfully composed, never at the expense of the subjects but to enliven them further. Usually it’s quite humorous, and as it played at the Melbourne International Film Festival and ones in Sydney, Edinburgh, and Telluride, I’ve read multiple critics comparing it to Wes Anderson’s famous framing. But here, Costi’s goals feel quite different from Anderson’s — the playful compositions underline the honest wholesomeness of the whole affair. In a way, each frame feels like the people of Carrbridge are smiling through the screen. The choice for a squareish 4:3 aspect ratio is similar — some might say it was chosen to artificially create a more antiquated vibe for the film, but I think it’s because a square frame is closer to the shape of a porridge bowl.

Authentic, Wholesome Documentary Filmmaking

There’s an authenticity to the way the documentary is executed. One subject rides a lawnmower into the center of the frame, then stops and explicitly asks for her cue to begin speaking to the camera. Conversations with Costi are left in the final cut. The film’s main subjects are lavved throughout, so when they’re toiling away setting up the competition hall, we can hear their breathing. It often feels as if we’re in the room with them.

Much of the film feels very natural, with little apparent artifice. But the film does afford itself one artistic flourish: Chieftain Miller, at the end of his final porridge competition, boards a train at Carrbridge Station and departs. Waving at his friends from the caboose, the chieftain is surrounded by white smoke until both man and train are swallowed completely. It’s a poetic farewell that the film fully earns, and though we know that Miller is eagerly looking forward to retirement, we can’t help but feel like Carrbridge is losing something wonderful and pure — and that Miller is, too.

Conclusion

Some films are just absolute poetry from start to finish, and this porridge documentary is one of them. Modern Scotland has so few films made about it that when a great one comes along — much like last year’s phenomenal The Outrun — it must be treasured. And as a recent immigrant to Scotland, I especially crave films like this, which give me a sort of national pride for this place that I now call my home. So clear is The Golden Spurtle’s kindness and empathy, so resonant is its portrait of small-town life, and so overwhelming is the Scottish pride that it inspires — it’s a film I want to remember forever.

The Golden Spurtle premiered in the U.K. on September 12, 2025, and is now available to rent in the U.K. and Ireland. It is not yet available to watch in the U.S.