Troubled Students, Troubled Teacher as Cillian Murphy Stars in Hard-Hitting Drama ‘Steve’

Fresh from the awards circuit and his Oscar win for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy is stepping into a very different kind of spotlight in Netflix’s upcoming drama Steve. The Irish actor’s post-blockbuster choices have leaned toward the intimate and the intense and this latest project fits right in to that.

Adapted from Max Porter’s acclaimed novel Shy, the film trades sweeping spectacle for a concentrated, one-day character study. Murphy plays the titular Steve, the headteacher of a struggling reform school in the mid-1990s. It’s a role that asks for both authority and vulnerability and judging by the trailer, Murphy has no intention of holding back.

Tim Mielants, who previously directed Murphy in Small Things Like These, returns to helm the project. This time, the perspective shifts from the troubled students of Porter’s original work to the man charged with guiding them. The result promises to be a raw, unvarnished look at a teacher fighting to keep his school alive, and perhaps himself intact in the process.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Steve follows a pivotal day in the life of head teacher Steve (Murphy) and his students at a last-chance reform school amid a world that has forsaken them. As Steve fights to protect the school’s integrity and prevent its impending closure, he grapples with his own mental health. In parallel to Steve’s struggles, we meet Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a troubled teen caught between his past and what lies ahead as he tries to reconcile his inner fragility with his impulse for self-destruction and violence.”

While it’s a story about a teacher and his students, Steve refuses to follow the usual sentimental blueprint. There’s no slow clap in the school hall, no tidy moral victory. Instead, the film dives into the messy, combustible reality of a last-chance classroom, where confrontation and connection are separated by the thinnest of lines.

Steve opens in select cinemas on 19 September before streaming worldwide on Netflix from 3 October. Expect a tight, pressure-cooker drama that asks what it really takes to reach those who’ve stopped listening — and those who’ve never truly been heard.

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook Instagram Twitter(X) YouTube TikTok