Info in Movie News | After winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer and strengthening his reputation with Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy is back with a project that feels entirely different. The Irish actor now headlines Netflix’s latest drama Steve, a moving story about education, mental health, and the struggles of those left behind by a failing system.
According to Variety, Netflix has dropped the official trailer for Steve, based on Max Porter’s 2023 novel Shy. The story follows Steve (Cillian Murphy), the headmaster of a last-chance boys’ reform school in the mid-1990s. The institution serves as the final stop for troubled teenagers but faces closure due to a lack of support. In his own private life, Steve is dealing with his own psychological issues. Nevertheless, he still makes an effort to keep the integrity of the institution. On the other hand, he has to manage his own mental issues in his personal space.
The movie, nevertheless, tells the story that Steve is not only a hero but also his Shy (Jay Lycurgo) - a young boy who seems to be stuck with a traumatic past and an uncertain future. Shy is depicted wrestling with his fragile side along with his violent impulses, which thereby become the movie's main emotional conflict. The relationship he had with Steve was the complexity of teacher–student relationships in a society that is indifferent towards the most fragile members of the community.
The group of actors is the one full of stars. Besides Murphy and Lycurgo, Steve also has Tracey Ullman, who hardly ever appears in a dramatic role, Simbi Ajikawo—better known as Little Simz from Top Boy—and BAFTA winner and Academy Award nominee Emily Watson. Watson has done a lot of work with Murphy, notably in Small Things Like These, and her coming here is like another candle illuminating the emotional trajectory of the story.
Murphy teamed up with director Tim Mielants for the shooting of Peaky Blinders Season 3, and now he is back with him for another project. Murphy has described Steve as one of the most difficult roles of his career, especially since Max Porter wrote the script specifically with him in mind. “There was no acting, just reacting and existing within it,” Murphy told Deadline.
This adaptation does not simply copy the novel. Author Max Porter, who serves as screenwriter and executive producer, reinterprets the story by shifting the focus from Shy to Steve. Porter has explained that he was inspired after speaking with educators who felt the story reflected their own experiences. “Many teachers saw themselves in it,” Porter said.
On the visual front Mielants uses a unique method that combines the rough, 1990s dogma-inspired look and tightly detailed, observational style. Some scenes in the movie depict the students in staged documentary-style interviews which are their only interactions and consequently contribute to the movie's realism. In order to keep the movie authentic, Porter was very hands-on during production and went as far as selecting some non-professional youths whose unpolished acting provided extra authenticity.
With Projects like Steve, Big Things Films is surely going places. The company, which Steve Murphy and Alan Moloney co-founded, just had their second project officially marked by Steve. The soundtrack is composed by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, best known for their acclaimed work on Ex Machina and Devs. Their atmospheric music is expected to deepen the movie’s raw emotional tone.
Audiences will be able to spot Steve first at TIFF 2025, i.e., the Toronto International Movie Festival. After a few days’ discharge from theatres on September 19, 2025, the movie will be available on Netflix worldwide starting from October 3, 2025. It will also be displayed at the Cork International Movie Festival in the area where Murphy still lives.
As Steve, among its other siblings, mainly deals with education, mental health, and systemic failure, the movie is not to be categorized as just a common drama. The movie proposes itself to be the artist’s psychological portrait and, at the same time, an indirect political critique. Supported by Murphy’s absolute professionalism and a strong secondary cast, the movie promises to be one of Netflix’s original most daring creations of the year.
Murphy’s Steve is not only a new challenge for him as an actor but, at the same time, it’s also the way he chooses to tell a story that he finds both necessary and timeless. After staging the globe with over-the-top projects scale, he is now doing the opposite, focusing on the micro but still powerful wars that define human lives. If the buzz is to be believed, this might be his most impactful performance yet.
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