TIFF 2025: The Boys Will be Alright in 'Steve'

Steve lives in the face of Cillian Murphy. As the titular teacher at an all-boys school for last chances, he is the antidote to every “cool math teacher” strewn across television canon. Steve isn’t just the head teacher of Stanton Wood; he is a human with his own set of difficulties that flow in and out of the walls of a school being loosely held together by a dedicated staff. Nothing like the cameras floating around Abbot Elementary, Steve and his colleagues are challenged by a documentary film crew that descends upon their crumbling college. In front of the cameras, a vulnerable faculty and class spill beans about their struggles while praising the institution that keeps them all employed or out of jail. But within the walls of the faculty lounge or the dorms, there are further tribulations that don’t make for such feel-good news tag fodder.

The school is being shut down, and the grand project to keep these boys with nothing left in a safe and nurturing environment is on a financial chopping block. There is no rush to “raise the money” or “save the school,” in this story, it’s simply one of people holding on for dear life being asked to clutch a bit harder. There are times in this story where it seems it will be a tale of understanding the value of taxpayer funded schools paying for “luxury private accommodation and education” for misfits as against their worth in society, but Steve veers from a political conversation about the value of a dollar to one of humanity. Nowhere is it denied that the boys are trouble, but instead, it’s explored how the boys are troubled. They’re a challenge, they’re difficult, they’re sometimes hopeless, and in the words of Tracey Ullman’s Amanda, “I f***ing adore them.”

For his latest outing with Tim Mielants (who worked on Peaky Blinders and Small Things Like These), Murphy has brought the sort of soft performance from later scenes of his long-running series. One can hear his, “no fighting,” speech spilling into heated moments at Stanton Wood, and his performance of being defeated and swallowing it to be strong is ever present and dynamically acted here. Queen of accents, Ullman, also shines as the de facto mother to these forgotten boys and serves as an extra beating heart in a movie so full of them. The ensemble cast of boys is stellar, particularly Jay Lycurgo as Shy who has the most work to do playing all ends of an emotional spectrum on just one long day on campus.

Steve frames moments of a teacher breaking up fights and connecting with students with low-res analog shots of talking heads. It’s a stylistic choice but it doesn’t feel framed for comedy or to show juxtaposition, but as a way to peak into the minds of the leads when they’re away from the others and looking to grasp spotlight. Though the crew is invasive, talking heads feel like diaries, and they’re weaponized to ask the audience to consider them as last testaments. There is a surprising number of horror style shots that dance with dreaminess and the surreal which further upend any comfort the viewer might have settled into as they consume this.
Gorgeous tales of above-and-beyond teachers are splattered all over this frantic and messy tale of boys and their caretakers, and it’s easy to consider The Dead Poet’s Society and Dangerous Minds among this film’s cohorts. In many ways, it’s the anti-The Holdovers and an antidote to Adolescence that considers the sort of intervention that could be done at a different stage.

Steve is never about the success, failure, necessity, or wastefulness of reform programs, but is instead of the sorts of people enveloped in them. Of an imperfect man forced to be a teacher to those who need everything from him, of the burdens of a demanding and thankless career balanced against a rich life, of sorrow, love, friendship, and the sorts of interventions that keep people alive. In that way, it’s a gorgeous and affecting somber but never slow tale of humanity.

Steve played the Toronto International Film Festival and will hit select theaters on September 19, 2025 and will premiere on Netflix on October 3, 2025