Making its World Premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Steve sees the head of a school on its last legs navigating a particularly bad school day, made harder by a documentary news crew capturing every emotional and chaotic moment.
With classes disrupted, an MP coming to visit, and of course, the ever-present camera crew, can the faculty of the school keep their charges out of trouble long enough to make a good impression for the news?
What is Steve about?
Based on Shy, Max Porter’s 2023 novella, Steve follows the titular headmaster, played by Cillian Murphy, as a series of unfortunate events challenge his otherwise passionate and positive personality.
Steve’s general optimism is in stark contrast to his surroundings. The crumbling school is under-resourced and woefully understaffed. Steve is not just the school head, but a teacher, mentor, friend, and ally to his students and faculty. It’s a lot of work for a man who’s also fighting his own demons.
Of particular concern for Steve is young Shy (Jay Lycurgo), who oscillates between an effervescent personality, when he’s on drugs, and extreme depression when he’s not. Lycurgo is the star of the show here. As Murphy mentioned in the Q&A, Lycurgo has the ability “to show but conceal”, which is what makes him so magnetic to watch in this film. It’s not easy to go toe-to-toe with Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy, but Lycurgo does an incredible job of demonstrating a teenager barely keeping his head above water while battling a downward spiral.
Of course, it’s easier to make a connection with Shy because the audience is told what the reason for Shy’s depression is. However, the faculty is clueless. Because, as concerning as Shy’s situation is, there are several other boys at the school, with a variety of problems such as grief, addiction, anger management issues, and, most importantly, abandonment.
These children quite literally have nobody else but the faculty at this school. That is an immense amount of responsibility for a tiny handful of faculty. And Steve doesn’t shy away from showing exactly how much work that is. From showing Steve running from room to room and board room to classroom, to the students having extended, and needless, fights at every opportunity, the film puts the audience in the midst of the melee, as uncomfortable and harrowing as that may be.
Steve contains many layers, in the plot and characters
Steve takes the “one bad day” concept and applies it to everyday people and situations. The 24-hour duration of the film sees the most ordinary events at the school become heightened and tense, partly due to the fact that there is a documentary crew wandering around, asking probing questions, and questioning the very existence of the school.
But aside from the documentary aspect, the students have their own dynamics that cause friendship and strife. Fights break out, whether or not the camera or faculty are around—in fact, at several points, Steve ends up being at the receiving end of punches and shoves even as he tries to break up fights. That he just gets back up and tries to help the student is part of Steve’s personality, and his charm.
He’s more a friend to the students than a headmaster, enjoying their music, talking to them as a peer, and never reprimanding them. There were several times when Steve should have disciplined a student for abysmal behaviour, but he always chooses the path of discussion and understanding. That kindness is brilliantly imbued by Murphy, who’s bright eyes and hollow cheeks belie a hidden pain in what the students see as the world’s most patient teacher.
But I couldn’t help but wonder how every single one of the faculty—and I do mean every single one, from the deputy head and the psychologist to the teacher who’s only been there one month—is so fond of the children, so dedicated to them, that they’re ready to risk life and limb for them. Mielants spoke of being given chances by several teachers and that admiration comes through in the film, but it seems disingenuous.
Am I being particularly harsh because my experience with teachers has been less than stellar? Perhaps. However, the students do behave atrociously and while punishment cannot be condoned, they seem to be left to do whatever they want, no matter how harmful. No wonder the school is in such a bad condition.
The two halves of Steve
I was completely engrossed in the first half of Steve, which combined the documentary crew’s footage with almost guerilla style handheld camerawork. It often felt like the audience was in the hallways and rooms with the characters, dodging punches and flying plates, running in the rain as the boys played football.
But then halfway through the film, the camerawork completely changes. It goes from raw and handheld to slick and experimental, turning the camera upside-down to highlight the perilous decisions the characters are making. From then on, the film looks, well, like a film, any other film, not Steve, the intimate portrayal of this small school trying to change these children’s lives. It took me completely out of the experience, and I felt like I could never get back in.
The story continued to be strong and emotional, but the directorial decisions in the second half felt incongruous with the depths the plot was plumbing. And I also felt like there were two more endings than there needed to be. Every time I thought the film had found a perfect ending, it kept going, and that diluted the impact of the story.
Did Steve change from book to film?
Porter, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, said during the TIFF Q&A that he changed the perspective from Shy to Steve during the adaptation process, a decision that was made when Murphy came on board the film. Porter “changed the cosmos of the story” to not just make it more about Steve, but to also give more room to every other character.
I did wonder why the film didn’t focus solely on Shy, who seemed to have the most burdens to bear. But that is the film’s greatest strength—its ensemble cast. Director Tim Mielants auditioned 3000 boys to cast the film, he said during the Q&A. Murphy then added that Mielants auditions in-person as much as he can, instead of requesting self-tapes, which has become the norm. That in-person experience helped the director build a dynamic with the cast that finally appeared in the film.
Lycurgo described the “boys” in the film as his “brothers” and that camaraderie shines through in this film. Despite the fights and the name-calling, the bond between these boys and their teachers is undeniable. Steve is strongest when it leans on those moments, when it places the camera in front of Murphy and one of the boys and just has them talk, about parents, their favourite rap music, the future. When the film tries too many techniques to explore the minds of the characters, that’s when it gets too gimmicky, leaving the strengths of the story and actors behind.
Having said all that, the charm of the cast, Murphy and Lycurgo’s incredible performances, and the immersiveness of that first half, are more than enough reason to park yourself in front of this film whenever you get a chance to see it. As Mielants said at the end of the Q&A, this film belongs to us, the audience, now. It is up to us to decide what to do with it.
Steve had its world premiere at TIFF 2025 and premieres on Netflix on October 3, 2025.