There are sex-positive films, and then there is My Friend the Porn Star, a movie that’s about as pro-copulation as possible without being an actual work of pornography. German director-star Rosa Friedrich keeps things just on the exhibitable side of NC-17 in terms of explicitness for this goofy but quite winning documentary about how she tried to make one kind of film and ended up making another.

The original idea was to record her friend Timo as he attempts to fulfill his own exhibitionistic desire by getting Rosa to film him having sex with assorted women. But the two have different artistic visions. When he suddenly ghosts her in the middle of production and just goes AWOL, like many a frustrated woman before her she finishes the project to her own satisfaction. She partly achieves this by using very obvious deep-fake technology to graft an actor’s head onto Timo’s body for the footage she’s already shot, so that we can see the real Timo from the neck down but with a pixelated box where the head should be of the actor she chose. (It’s not clear whose voice we’re ultimately hearing, the actor’s or Timo’s.)

Plus, she gets a very diverse group of women — including a dominatrix, a non-binary food-porn maker, three trans women in a polycule, and several others — to make little shorts about what they find erotic. All in all this makes for a sweet, funny and, yes, horny little package that should be very bookable for future festivals after its Karlovy Vary debut.

Although the film skips around Germanophone countries Germany and Austria while toggling between different time frames, Friedrich manages to get across how it all went wrong and then so very right for the end product we’re watching. I may be wrong, but almost in passing near the beginning it’s mentioned that Rosa and Timo were a heterosexual couple at one point, but now they are mainly just friends who are at ease with watching each other have sex with other people. Ish. At least Timo likes watching porn and sex in general while Rosa’s not that interested in it herself. Timo, however, is excited by the idea of people watching him, and feels like this is one way to get in touch with his feminine side, although his intellectual justifications change constantly, just as he can’t commit to what he wants to do with the film.

In the end, Friedrich makes this equivocation and self-questioning — not just Timo’s but that of other people too — a theme about how much we choose to reveal or conceal ourselves. In the end, she’s probably succeeded in making a more interesting film than what Timo seems to want to have made, the latter sounding for all intents and purposes like an exercise in narcissistic self-indulgence.

At any rate, before Timo ankled the project, he shot some scenes with several of the women he and Friedrich recruited at events like the Venus Expo in Berlin, a fair for “erotic and lifestyle.” Timo and Friedrich talk with Adrineh Simonian, a former opera singer who now produces porn and who’s full of sensible advice. The duo travel to Hungary to meet Donna, a well-known porn actor, but she decides not to take part in the shoot, for reasons not explained on camera but seemingly to do with the production’s lack of script and general professionalism.

Regularly inserted into the Timo sections are clips from the seven short films Friedrich ended up shooting with some of the people she met in the process, which explore what turns them on personally. Some of the footage is endearingly vanilla, some a bit more fruity — quite literally in the case of non-binary participant Alice Eric BigClit, who gets into a bathtub naked and has slices of fruit and whipped cream arranged artfully over their body.

The full spectrum of sexuality is discussed, if not quite shown, from BDSM to play with assorted gadgets to water sports and the like, but with much attention to why it all turns the subjects on, a focus on psychology more than anatomy. In the end, they show the package of shorts at an erotic film festival and Friedrich just holds on the faces of her cast as they watch the films, delighting in seeing themselves being seen. It’s that joyousness that really makes this such a relatable, kooky-kinky delight, along with Friedrich and editor Melanie Schmidt’s natural comic timing.

Another season of Disney‘s television series adaptation of Rick Riordan‘s Percy Jackson and the Olympians has come and gone, but Season 3 is close at hand.

The series received a very early Season 3 renewal in March 2025, and some very key players have been cast for the third installment.

Read on for more details and everything we know about Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3.

When will Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 come out?

Author Rick Riordan posted that Season 3 is coming out this year. Production has wrapped. A teaser of Percy (Walker Scobell) and Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) at what looks like the opening middle school dance scene of The Titan’s Curse is circulating as a teaser post-finale of Season 2.

The details of the release date could be revealed or at least further discussed at Disney Entertainment Television’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians panel presentation in Hall H, which will kick off the run of show.

What will Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 be about?

Season 3 of the show will be adapted from the third book in Riordan’s original series — The Titan’s Curse. This book marks a shift in the tone of the books as things get a little darker and heavier for the demigods.

Will there be new characters in Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3?

Yes, several new faces will appear in Season 3 just as they were new to the book. At San Diego Comic Con 2025, Disney announced the casting of Bianca and Nico Di Angelo, children of Hades who team up with Percy in the third book.

Olive Abercrombie will portray Bianca, and Levi Chrisopulos will play Nico.

RELATED: ‘Percy Jackson And The Olympians’ Unveils Season 2 Release Date, Epic Teaser Trailer & Bianca And Nico Di Angelo Casting For Season 3 — Comic-Con

The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported the news that Dafne Keen (Deadpool & Wolverine, His Dark Materials) has been cast as Artemis, the goddess of hunting and the moon and that Saara Chaudry (The Mysterious Benedict Society, PAW Patrol: The Movie) will play Zoë Nightshade, Artemis’ lieutenant and an immortal hunter. Before she joined the Hunters of Artemis, Nightshade, daughter of Atlas and Pleione, used to be a Hesperide, or nymph of the sunset.

Variety exclusively reported Kate McKinnon’s casting as Aphrodite for Season 3 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite can alter her appearance based on the beholder.

Deadline broke the news of Holt McCallany’s casting as the feared Titan Atlas, who holds up the sky. We also revealed that David Costabile will play Dr. Thorn, who readers meet at the very beginning of The Titan’s Curse. Jesse L. Martin will portray Annabeth’s mortal father, Frederick Chase.

As revealed exclusively in Variety, Ming-Na Wen has been cast as Hera, Jennifer Beals as Demeter and Hubert Smielecki as Apollo. Demeter is the goddess of marriage and Queen of Olympus, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, and Apollo is the god of hunting and the sunlight, twin brother of Artemis (who will be played by Dafne Keen).

Is Season 3 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians in production?

Filming for Season 3 started in August 2025, a year after production on Season 2 wrapped.

EXCLUSIVE:  Liza Colón-Zayas, who is coming off her Emmy Award-winning gig on FX’s The Bear, has joined the cast of David Shore’s upcoming Hulu drama series Conviction.

She joins the previously announced Elisabeth Moss, who leads the series and executive produces, as well as Jimmi Simpson, William Jackson Harper, Kevin McKidd, Sebastian De Souza, Adam Godley, Linda Emond and Ella Anderson.

Based on the 2023 book of the same name by Jack Jordan, Conviction follows criminal defense attorney Neve Harper (Moss), a confident lawyer who finally has her shot at a career-making case: a high-profile murder where the husband is accused of killing his wife by setting their home on fire. But when a mysterious stranger begins blackmailing Neve, she is forced to compromise every legal, moral, and ethical obligation to gain an acquittal — or else risk her dark secrets being exposed.

Details regarding who Colón-Zayas, a recurring guest star, will play are under wraps.

Executive producers include Shore (Shore Z Productions), Moss (Love & Squalor Pictures), author Jordan, Warren Littlefield, along with Ann Johnson and Lisa Harrison (The Littlefield Co.), Bert Salke (Co-Lab21), Lindsey McManus (Love & Squalor Pictures), and Erin Gunn (Shore Z Productions).

Colón-Zayas most recently starred as Tina Marrero across all 5 seasons of the critically acclaimed series The Bear. For her portrayal, she received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She won her first statuette in 2024 (for Season 2), making history as the first Latina to be awarded an Emmy in this category. Her additional TV credits include HBO’s In Treatment and NBC’s Law & Order: SVU.

Up next, Colón-Zayas will be seen in the blockbuster film Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31), playing Detective Jean DeWolff. She recently wrapped production on the indie drama Fleur alongside Halle Berry, directed by Ellie Foumbi. Additional credits include John Krasinski’s live-action animated fantasy comedy IF, as well as starring in and producing Allswell in New York, a dramedy that won the award for Best Screenplay in a US Narrative Feature at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Colón-Zayas is repped by Liebman Entertainment, Stewart Talent, and Schreck, Rose Dapello, etc.