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Ask any gay man with a social media account, and they likely have an opinion about Jordan Firstman<\/a>. The backlash-courting queer actor\/comedian, controversial most recently because of an online flare-up over querying the sexual realism of \u201cHeated Rivalry,\u201d is labeled either candid or confrontational. He also has a record of taking on sexually explicit projects like Sebastian Silva\u2019s suicide-ideating, ketamine-fueled dark comedy \u201cRotting in the Sun<\/a>.\u201d His status as a self-aware, hyper-online provocateur may not seem to suggest the makings of a bona fide filmmaker, but just wait.<\/p>\n While that reputation might have Firstman on guard as he debuts his feature writing\/directing debut \u201cClub Kid<\/a>,\u201d as it will certain circumspect corners of the audience, this terrific movie should put any of those nervous feelings to rest. Even his haters won\u2019t be able to resist what\u2019s announced here as a major filmmaking talent with a sensitive side that belies his brash, internet-based persona.<\/p>\n He also stars as the protagonist of his hugely crowd-pleasing, excruciatingly funny, and poignant first film<\/a> \u2014 one that plays to all sides of the room despite being brazenly, unapologetically queer \u2014 which will prime Firstman-savvy viewers to immediately interpret \u201cClub Kid\u201d as autobiographical. That\u2019s because it is. <\/p>\n He plays party promoter Peter, now in his thirties after a decade-plus of MDMA-addled revelry, the kind where all the days blur and blot into one long and sweaty night with a coming horizon in the shape of regret. Firstman may not be playing himself this time, but he is playing a version of that self, having, as he says, spent enough years in Berlin to be labeled \u201cthe angel of Berghain\u201d by his new friends, but now ready to put the days-that-became-years of GHB, MDMA, and other letters of the alphabet behind him.<\/p>\n \u201cClub Kid\u201d is exactly about what happens when the lights go up on the party, the shameover of the morning after that becomes a way of being, and the need to do it all over again to stave off last night\u2019s aching after effects. But it\u2019s also about \u2014 earnesty alert! \u2014 family lost and found, not only because of the queer community formed around the now-orphaned Peter, who lives in the rent-controlled Manhattan his mother left him after she died, but because he wakes up one day to find a child he fathered and never knew about, literally on his doorstep.<\/p>\n \u201cClub Kid\u201d was shot on 35mm on location in New York City with a team of backers including \u201cAnora\u201d Oscar-winning producer Alex Coco and nepo filmmaker Olmo Schnabel<\/a>, and a millennial cast of queer comedians. So it\u2019s hard not to leave the movie thinking all that\u2019s needed here is an A24 logo slapped onto the opening credits, and it\u2019s ready for the world. But no matter; while Firstman\u2019s aesthetic is loudly in A24\u2019s register, it turns out to be an asset rather than a limitation.<\/p>\n Beginning inside a sensually lit, drug-soaked party and ending as one rages on without you from afar, \u201cClub Kid\u201d drops us into Brooklyn 2016. Peter, sing-screaming Rihanna\u2019s \u201cSex with Me\u201d in a clown car of an Uber ride with his friends, is headed into yet another bender to remember (but also eventually forget). At a club of the sort that now dominates night culture in Bushwick, rising party promoter Peter ends up hooking up \u2014 and then really hooking up \u2014 with a couple of hyperactive \u201cinnit, babes?\u201d British women in the back room. It\u2019s all inconspicuously taking a turn for the sexual when the movie smash cuts to \u201ca decade or so later,\u201d when the proverbial party is still dying down, but Peter is still living in it \u2014 albeit more sweaty and tragic 10 years on.<\/p>\n He\u2019s now made a career out of his drug use with his best friend and business partner Sophie (a marvelous, perpetually coked-out Cara Delevingne, who\u2019s two inches from a breakdown at all times). A few days before the one that\u2019s about to change his life, they have an important sitdown coming up with FiDi investors to help expand their New York party empire. But alas, as he couldn\u2019t help himself once again the night before, Peter wakes up drugged to the gills, rushing to the meeting only to nod off at the table, still in a GHB-spiked stupor. (His reaction to a dropper of hot sauce that looks curiously similar to the one he used last night to get high is one of the film\u2019s many brilliantly funny little pratfalls.) \u00a0<\/p>\n All of that\u2019s to say Peter\u2019s life is still totally a mess, and his arrested development from a decade of partying has now washed him out to the point where sobriety is maybe never part of his day. (A weekend spent dissipated, hungover, jerking off to internet porn and eating Popeye\u2019s in bed will ring true to anyone who\u2019s ever been gay and in this state.)<\/p>\n Party\u2019s certainly over, though, when one of those British \u201cinnit babes\u201d from 10 years ago, Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), shows up from London at his apartment (where Peter lives with an \u201cAzerbaijanian aspiring queer philosopher\u201d who doesn\u2019t pay rent) with an eight-year-old boy. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a kid! \u2018Yay!,\u2019\u201d she tells him while delivering the news that Arlo (preternaturally gifted young breakout actor Reggie Absalom) is in fact Peter\u2019s child with one of the other women from that opening-scene heterosexual encounter, who\u2019s just died. The first and only time Peter fucked a woman, and now he\u2019s fucked himself into having to finish raising a small boy. <\/p>\n Cue the manic panic, more drug use, and resignation to the idea that there\u2019s no sending this kid back to the U.K.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s a bit sudden how fast the switch flips from Peter feeling wildly ill-equipped for parenting to becoming a nurturing caretaker, he and Arlo turn out to have more in common than not. Arlo, for one, has the music taste of someone who grew up on Pitchfork, eagerly taking to the $300 Elliott Smith record Peter buys for him in a later scene. (The soundtrack on this thing, by the way, rules, from Arthur Russell during the film\u2019s melancholy final act to \u201cThe White Lotus\u201d composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer\u2019s deeply felt original score.) Their relationship, however quickly, becomes the film\u2019s so-far unexpected sweet center, as Peter starts to really appreciate and eventually love Arlo, who has traumas of his own.<\/p>\n A lot of the success of \u201cClub Kid\u201d rides not only on Firstman\u2019s shoulders, but also on the collaborators he\u2019s working with, including cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra who captures a certain lost-era grit in New York as well as in the chaos-packed nightclub sequences. \u201cClub Kid\u201d also takes advantage of New York City as not just a backdrop but a central character in the storytelling, using the city in a way that feels rare onscreen these days.<\/p>\n \u201cClub Kid\u201d freewheels and unwinds like a head rush of a zippy party movie until Arlo\u2019s introduction brings the comedown. It turns out he feels more at home among Peter\u2019s \u201cfound family\u201d of queer revelers, discovering his own DJ skills in the process, than he ever did in London. Could Peter really warm to fatherhood? Real emotional stakes start to heighten as he begins recognizing the unexpected realities of his new arrangement, like getting Arlo into school, or keeping the boy shielded from the drug use of his friends while Peter\u2019s own finally starts to diminish. A nervous, tentative romance comes into view with child psychologist Oscar (Diego Calva), and on a date where a namecheck of Gregg Araki\u2019s \u201cMysterious Skin\u201d becomes not just a tender confession, but a turn-on. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cClub Kid\u201d takes a sharp dramatic turn, in which the nature of Arlo\u2019s living situation becomes even more dire and probably illegal, that almost shouldn\u2019t work in a comedy like this \u2014 but it\u2019s a turn that feels inevitable given how \u201cClub Kid\u201d is structured like the rise and fall of a drug experience, a high that crashes down into despair. The emotional arc bends toward \u201cKramer vs. Kramer\u201d territory with a cathartic (and well-played by Firstman) courtroom oner. Peter may be insecure about his own place in a world where only parts of it have room for him, but as a storyteller with an eye, Firstman is anything but.<\/p>\n Firstman is by now an established comedic voice, but his work on all sides of the camera here leaves pretty of room for revelation, for him to become a genuine discovery beyond an audience of gay, internet-addled millennials. \u201cClub Kid\u201d has real potential to break out bigger than its seemingly niche scope would suggest, with Firstman finally shirking the ironic pose he\u2019s taken online for years to emerge as a sincere storyteller with heart as much as humor.<\/p>\n Grade: A-<\/p>\n \u201cClub Kid\u201d premiered at the 2026 Cannes<\/a> Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014 all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ask any gay man with a social media account, and they likely have an opinion about Jordan Firstman.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[18451,278322,88,11337,2695,158549,206,900],"class_list":["post-644930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes","tag-club-kid","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-jordan-firstman","tag-movies","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Jim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-w1280.webp\")
<\/a> ![\"Arthur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/P115VOPF-e1778840917115.jpg\")
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