‘Club Kid’ Trailer: Jordan Firstman’s A24 Crowd-Pleaser Will Be Huge

If you were at Cannes this year, you knew it: All Jordan Firstman’s electrifying directorial debut “Club Kid” needed was an A24 logo slapped on the top of it, and it’d be ready for the world. Indeed, A24 acquired this hugely crowd-pleasing party movie with a heart out of the Un Certain Regard section for a fall release.

That means they’re serious about the film‘s prospects as an awards contender: It’s playing Toronto and the New York Film Festival, and if you use your power-of-deduction skills, you’ll figure out that it’s almost certainly playing Telluride, too. Firstman, welcome to the rarefied air of the Colorado mountains. And to the gauntlet of Oscar season.

A24 has dropped the first trailer for “Club Kid,” which Firstman writes, directs, and stars in as an over-partied club promoter crashing out in New York City — and whose redemption comes in the form of a 10-year-old child he has no memory of siring. That child also comes in the form of breakout young British star Reggie Absolom, who balances a preternatural affinity for Cocteau Twins and Elliott Smith with a precocious charm that will warm even the coldest of hearts all the way to the back of the theater.

All of that’s to say that “Club Kid” deserves to be as commercial as any movie. Out of Cannes, I called the movie “brazen, funny, and surprisingly earnest” in my IndieWire review, writing that even Firstman’s online haters “won’t be able to resist what’s announced here as a major filmmaking talent with a sensitive side that belies his brash internet persona.”

The movie is also brazenly, unapologetically career, as Peter (with Firstman playing what seems like a loose version of himself) himself is gay and ends up falling for a child psychologist played by Diego Calva. That’s after Peter’s son Arlo is dropped on his doorstep by a strung-out British “innit babe” flushed out from his club-hopping past, Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Arlo is, in fact, Peter’s child from a long-ago hard-partying night. The first and only time Peter fucked a woman, and now he’s fucked himself into having to finish raising a small boy.

The wall-to-wall superb cast also includes Cara Delevingne, Colleen Camp, Vicki Pepperdine, Nigil Whyte, Eldar Isgandarov, Saturn Risin9, Miss Benny, and Alaska Riley. Producers include “Anora” Oscar winner Alex Coco, plus Galen Core, Michael Bloom, and Ryan Heller.

“Club Kid” opens in select theaters starting November 6, with a wider rollout to follow. Watch the trailer below.