A 25-year-old aspiring novelist dives into the deep end of niche sexuality in “Sebastian,” a sexy and provocative queer drama from writer/director Mikko Mäkelä. The Finnish filmmaker first brought the movie, featuring a breakout performance from Ruaridh Mollica as writer turned sex worker Max, to the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Kino Lorber picked up distribution rights to the film and will now release it starting August 2 in select theaters. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
Here’s the official synopsis: “Max (Ruaridh Mollica) is a 25-year-old aspiring novelist, living in London and paying his dues working at a literary magazine. Frustrated by his own ambitions and the pressures to succeed, Max begins moonlighting as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, secretly meeting men via an escorting platform and using his experiences to fuel his stories. What begins as a few furtive meetings soon becomes a hidden nocturnal life, and the debut novel that he has been longing to write finally seems within reach.
“Finding himself more comfortable as Sebastian than expected, yet determined to keep his exploits a secret, Max increasingly struggles to remain in control of a delicately balanced double-life. As he confronts conflicting feelings of ecstasy, shame, and exhilarating liberation, Max has to reckon with whether Sebastian is merely a writer’s tool to achieve first-hand authenticity — or whether something more is at stake.”
As I wrote at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in my IndieWire review, this provocative, explicit, and at times tender drama is for arthouse-film fans with a “taste for the kinky and sad,” adding, “Max’s encounters introduce several explicit (and, I have to say, pretty hot) sex scenes into the story but they start to get scarier as one client exerts too much control. Eventually, a client, played by a genuinely wonderful and so, so moving Jonathan Hyde (a character actor who rarely gets such a showcase), shows Max kindness and doesn’t even expect sex after all. Max and his bond is best left unspoiled here, as it’s ultimately the crux of the film.” Ultimately, Max “finds something close to love and understanding on the other side of a long dark night of transgressive sexuality.”
“Sebastian” will be released on Friday, August 2 in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco with an expansion to follow.
