Blue Film arrives in UK cinemas on 25 September via Peccadillo Pictures

Blue Film arrives in UK and Irish cinemas on 25 September

Elliot Tuttle's debut feature is a queer chamber piece that was rejected by Sundance and SXSW and holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. Reed Birney and Kieron Moore in something genuinely difficult.

Aaron Eagle is a fetish camboy who specialises in financial domination. When a client offers him $50,000 for a single night, he arrives to find a masked man with a camera and a series of increasingly probing questions. When the mask comes off, the man is Hank Grant, a former middle school teacher who was convicted and imprisoned for an assault on one of Aaron's classmates. Hank was in love with Aaron as a child. He wants to know if he still is.

That is the film. Elliot Tuttle writes and directs. He shot it in two weeks with Mark Duplass as consulting producer. It was rejected by Sundance, SXSW and multiple major queer festivals before premiering in competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2025, where Reed Birney recalled the audience response: "Everybody was afraid to move. People just didn't know what they were watching and what was gonna happen. It felt very dangerous."

Kieron Moore, a British actor with credits in Vampire Academy and Code of Silence, plays Aaron. The performance has been described across festival coverage as a breakout: Deadline compared his charisma to a young Marlon Brando, with the same brawling sensuality and bruised vulnerability. Reed Birney, Tony Award winner for Mass, plays Hank and also executive produces.

The film is not interested in easy condemnation. It is interested in what desire does to people, what shame does to people, and what happens when two people who should not be in a room together spend a night trying to understand each other. It holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 42 critics. The consensus describes it as equal parts bracing and sensitive in its exorcism of the taboo, provocative without being exploitative thanks to phenomenal performances and Tuttle's emotional frankness.

Cinematography is by Ryan Jackson-Healy, editing by Zach Clark, music by Isaac Eiger. Distributed in the UK and Ireland by Peccadillo Pictures.

Certificate 18. Running time 85 minutes.

In UK and Irish cinemas from 25 September 2026.