It has long been held as true that blue is the colour of spirituality, intuition, truth, wisdom, and peace. Yet it is also associated with sadness and depression, deep emotions and even deeper secrets and woes. Blue represents the ocean and sky, and the vastness of both; it has myriad shades, tones, and depths, just like us, and that may be why blue has long held a prominent place in art. In film, blue has long been used to explore personality, emotional journeys, spirituality, rebirth, endings and beginnings, and for writer and director Elliot Tuttle, those themes form the heart of his challenging, striking, fearless and deeply moving debut feature Blue Film.
Blue Film is one of the most provocative, challenging, and psychologically complex films of 2026, and it’s bound to divide audiences, just as it has critics. Blue Film, like Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992), Larry Clark’s Kids (1993) and Agustí Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage (1986), disrupts, challenges, reframes and evokes uncomfortable emotions. It is the embodiment of James Baldwin’s quote: “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.”
A chamber piece that would feel just as at home on stage as it does on screen, Blue Film opens with the young, beautiful yet brutish Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore) commanding a crowd of online devotees in a chat room where he earns his living degrading, teasing and toying with faceless men who pay to be bombarded with homophobic slurs and sexual instructions. Aaron views these men as worthless servants, as they tip him, longing for this alpha male to control them sexually, physically, and psychologically. Occasionally, one of those men comes out of the shadows, and, as Aaron announces, tonight is one of those nights, as one man has offered him $50,000 for one night together in Los Angeles.
As Aaron arrives at the agreed house in the suburbs, he is greeted by a well-spoken man wearing a balaclava. The man appears nervous and unsure whether this was a sensible idea, but the cocky Aaron, wearing a sleeveless top and loose jeans, walks in and settles on the sofa. He thinks this is the same dance as always: a worthless and lonely gay man desperate for his attention who will do anything for his body.
Yet Aaron’s confidence and cockiness are misplaced this time. The man places a camcorder in front of him and asks him to tell him his story. It’s an unusual proposition, but one that comes with 25k upfront and a further 25k on completion. Aaron agrees. “You wanna hear the story about how I became Aaron Eagle?” he says. The man responds, “Yes”. Yet as the questions grow more personal, Aaron grows uneasy, and the night begins to sour.
This mysterious man, while gentle, nervous and welcoming, is overstepping a boundary, so Aaron decides enough is enough and gathers his belongings to leave. “You don’t know me,” he shouts. “But I do know you, Aaron,” the man responds. “So tell me my real name,” he challenges. The man hesitates as Aaron nears the door, then responds, “It’s Alex, Alex McConnell.” The blood leaves Aaron’s face as he demands that the man remove the balaclava before pulling it from his head. Standing before him is Hank Grant (Reed Birney), or, as he knew him, Mr Grant, his old English teacher at his middle school back in Maine.
Mr Grant was convicted of the indecent assault of a young teen boy at Aaron/Alex’s school years ago. But why is he here now? Why spend time tracking down Aaron online, and why offer 50k for the privilege of a night together? Mr Grant provides the answer, stating that he was in love with Alex when he was his teacher and that he needs to know whether he still feels that love.
What follows is a night of revelation, closure, discussions on control versus consent and the loneliness of perversion in a film that, through exceptional performances and fearless force, faces challenging moral and ethical questions with a rare openness, as it unpacks a series of sexual and psychological themes most other films wouldn’t dare touch. Blue Film is a provocative, nuanced, artistically ambitious exploration of trauma, memory, identity and guilt.
“It started from thinking about my own adolescent sexuality”
As I sit down with writer and director Elliot Tuttle over Zoom, him in New York and me in London, I am keen to explore the creative process of writing Blue Film and its journey to the screen. “It started from thinking about my own adolescent sexuality,” Elliot says. “I had been journaling a lot about my sexuality in my early teens, as I became aware of myself for the first time, thinking about teachers that I had these kinds of intense secret longings for and crushes on. I then started exploring those feelings further, asking: who would I have become if those early crushes and desires had been reciprocated? Through various drafts, it became a film about loneliness and how we negotiate it.”
Can you tell us about bringing it to the screen? “We wanted to make this film very producible and easy to finance, with only a few locations; it’s, in essence, a conversation. I considered at length how to make the conversation feel revealing at each turn. It was a challenge, but it was a fun process of evolving creatively and knowing that, because we were making the film for very little money, I could do what I wanted for the most part.
Blue Film is a movie that relies heavily on the performances at its heart, and the ability of Reed Birney and Kieron Moore to convey the deeply complex personal, social, and sexual themes their interaction raises. Both performances are not only captivating but also rooted in vulnerability, culpability, toxicity, and emotional states that shift throughout the night. At what point did you know Reed and Kieron were right for the roles?
“Reed was the first actor to read the script. He’s who I wanted. I had seen him in this film called Mass from Sundance in 2017, which is very similarly contained, and thankfully he agreed. Then it was a bunch of chemistry reads over Zoom with different actors, alongside Reed, to find our Aaron/Alex. Kieron had this immediate chemistry with Reed, and they immediately became very close. They really enjoyed each other’s company, and they wanted the film to be the best it could be and to tell the story in the best way possible.”
In the opening of this article, I reference Gregg Araki’s The Living End, Larry Clark’s Kids, and Agustí Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage, all of which disrupt, challenge, and reframe, evoking uncomfortable emotions. Were there key points of reference to other films and novels that you asked Reid and Kieron to consider in the development of their characters? “Yes, with Kieron I pointed towards River Phoenix’s performance in My Own Private Idaho, and I sent him some links to more adult material of swaggering archetypal Camboys. With Reed, I made him a playlist of, like, these very melancholic, introspective songs, and we talked about Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice in the shaping of Hank’s character”.
The intense intimacy at the heart of Blue Film must have required extended periods of workshopping with Reed and Keiron? “I think I had them in person for probably two or three days before we started filming. There wasn’t much rehearsal due to time pressures. I wish we had had a little bit more money; then we could’ve rehearsed a lot longer. But, you know, they walked into the first rehearsal with established chemistry. They had been emailing back and forth, talking about the script, and getting to know each other before rehearsals; they felt comfortable enough to really, like, go there and do it. It was a huge gift to me that they did that”.
Expanding on those themes of intimacy and the topics Blue Film isn’t afraid to explore head-on, how did you, Reid, and Kieran ensure that there was a psychologically safe space around all of you when it hit cinema screens? “That’s a great question.” “I think coming out of the film, we really did have a very strong bond, and I think all of us felt very proud of it. There was a certain element of, you know, going into our first public screenings and not knowing how people would receive the film. But going into these screenings together was fabulous. We were close; we felt proud of it and felt confident in discussing it together.”
So let’s talk a bit about those early screenings. A host of major film festivals, including Sundance and SXSW, rejected Blue Film due to its themes. Do you think the current political and social climate has led festivals to become more risk-averse?
“I think that when we think of festivals as bastions of creative integrity and truly independent film, I’m not sure how true that is”
“I’m sure that’s part of it. But I also think the film industry itself is in a precarious position, and I think that leads people not to wanna take a bunch of risks. When I see a company or distributor fold, I’m reminded of how many are one bad project away from shuttering. Film festivals are big cultural events, and many exist only through corporate donations and sponsorships. I’m sure some of them are motivated by that financial interest, which I can’t really blame them for, because that’s what keeps their festival going. It’s complicated, and I think that when we think of festivals as bastions of creative integrity and truly independent film, I’m not sure how true that is. It’s a conversation a lot of my peers and friends in the industry have been having for the past five years.”
As we bring our conversation to a close, I am keen to hear what Elliot would like audiences to take away from Blue Film. “I’m just glad that people are watching it, and more than anything I hope they feel moved by it and want to debate it outside the screening”. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Blue Film will be debated and discussed, or that it has the power to evoke emotions that are both unnerving and deeply moving within its tight 85-minute runtime. It is, unquestionably, one of the bravest and boldest feature debuts I have seen in the past decade.
Blue Film is released in select UK & Irish cinemas on September 11 2026.
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