Despite some murky character motivation, Sebastian stands as a well-made feature from Mäkelä, which explores some compelling ideas surrounding artistic creation and companionship.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2025

It’s more interesting as a character study than a vehicle for examining the larger questions about sex work. A flawed but interesting drama, Sebastian presents a lot of modern conundrums, but performs better when focusing on humanity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 8, 2025

It’s tender, thoughtful film-making from Finnish director Mikko Mäkelä, exploring the bond between two men separated by generations but joined by literature and love.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 7, 2025

Sebastian gradually transforms into something more substantial when reaching towards a point about the cross-generational relaying of queer histories, but ultimately is too preoccupied with constructing a shallow character study.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2025

With the film partly caught in this self-referentiality, it doesn’t develop much beyond a vague treatise on the cost of pseudonymous exploitation. At least the director’s identification with his lead character results in a strong performance from Mollica.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2025

Somewhere, under the layers of trying too hard, Sebastian is a well-crafted movie about social media, sex, making art and embracing your true self. Sadly, any message gets lost in its directionless writing and lack of pace.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 2, 2025

This is a film about sex work and what it means to take possession of your own story that makes others seem artificial.

| Mar 31, 2025

As a whole, Sebastian falls short of the kind of piercing insight that Max is attempting to achieve in his own writing, but the film comes alive in the later scenes he shares with an elderly client with whom he forms a profound connection.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2025

… trades in both writer porn and actual porn, but in a way that does justice to the emotional realities involved with each.

| Original Score: 16/20 | Jan 18, 2025

Having set up all the elements of a thriller, the film proceeds to untangle them in a refreshingly different and mature way.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 6, 2025

Sebastian is a movie with a lot of promise that seems to focus on the wrong moments. There is an excellent short film hidden within the confines of a wandering narrative.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 11, 2024

In the end, “Sebastian” satisfies as a character study, and as a journey of self-acceptance, largely thanks to a charismatic, layered, thoroughly authentic performance from Mollica.

| Nov 6, 2024

Sebastian' is an ultimately absorbing and a little disturbing film; it makes you root for a character whose ambitions overpower his common human sense.

| Original Score: 75/100 | Oct 27, 2024

With its keen, sensual eye, “Sebastian” makes its portrait of an artist as a young sex worker brim with pained authenticity about how fleeting and seemingly transactional intimacies remain rife sites of exploration for queer writers.

| Aug 12, 2024

Ruaridh Mollica is tremendous as Max and even more compelling as Sebastian, and it’s all in the way he holds or breaks eye contact.

| Aug 11, 2024

British character actor Jonathan Hyde is understated and dignified as the editor who gets past Max's defenses, while relative newcomer Ruaridh Mollica lets you see every chink in Max's armor just before a piece of that armor falls away.

| Aug 9, 2024

I quite liked the director’s 2017 prior feature A Moment in the Reeds, a raw, deeply felt gay romance between a Finnish youth and a Syrian refugee. This English-language followup is much more polished, but feels titillating in familiar ways.

| Aug 7, 2024

Finnish filmmaker Mikko Makela finds layers of meaning, frankly exploring a range of moral questions. And while a couple of big plot points feel somewhat jarring and even distracting, the drama itself is internalised and gripping.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 6, 2024

Unfortunately, Sebastian can’t quite seem to get past its own basic set up to deliver something exceptional, making this movie just another addition to an already overflowing genre.

| Aug 6, 2024

Despite the film’s confident naturalism, it seems less intimate as it goes on, with Max somehow growing more distant and generic as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin.

| Aug 5, 2024