Official Trailer for ‘Sebastian’ LGBTQ Drama Starring Ruaridh Mollica
by Alex Billington
June 27, 2024
Source: YouTube
“You need to carry on and finish it.” Kino Lorber has revealed an official trailer for an indie LGBTQ drama titled Sebastian, made by a Finnish-British filmmaker named Mikko Mäkelä. This originally premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at the Provincetown & Frameline Film Festivals. Sebastian follows a burgeoning young journalist who turns to sex work to research his first novel. But where will this lead him? What will he discover? Another intimate, hypnotic exploration of repressed sexuality through cinema. Posing tantalizing questions about the creative process and the recurring cultural conversations about authenticity in art and who can / should tell certain stories, the film stars Ruaridh Mollica as Max, aka Sebastian, whose “fearless lead performance should elevate him to rising star status”, and who has already been cast based on his work here in the upcoming HBO series from Armando Iannucci called “The Franchise”. The cast includes Hiftu Quasem, Jonathan Hyde, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Dylan Brady, Pedro Minas, Matthias Moret, Akbar Kurtha, and Laurent Maria. This one is worth a look.
Here’s the first official trailer for Mikko Mäkelä’s film Sebastian, direct from KL’s YouTube:
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 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 initially 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 also reckon with whether Sebastian is merely a writer’s tool to achieve first-hand authenticity – or whether there is something more at stake…
Sebastian is both written & directed by up-and-coming Finnish-British filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä, making his second feature film after directing A Moment in the Reeds previously, as well as a few other short films. Produced by James Watson. With music by Ilari Heinilä. This initially premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Kino Lorber will debut Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian in select US theaters starting on August 2nd, 2024 coming up this summer. For more info, visit their official site. Who’s curious about it?
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