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

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

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

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

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

For all its gloomy aesthetic, there is something life-affirming about the kindness of a stranger who wants to read your work and the power that comes with owning one’s own words and stories.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 2, 2024

The film chases its own tail, resulting in a foreseeable transformation that has the emotional resonance of an after-school special.

| Aug 1, 2024

Mollica’s accomplished, measured performance drives Mäkelä’s sophomore feature, which refreshingly avoids judgment and gives Max the chance to embrace the wholeness of his queer sexuality through his experiences.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 30, 2024

Sex work as a topic is not enough to make a story interesting.

| Jan 23, 2024

There’s some lip service about how contemporary sex workers view their jobs today, but little sense of the weight of queer history or politics in the U.K.

| Jan 22, 2024

As a psychological portrait of an aspiring writer who gets too immersed in his own project, “Sebastian” is never as piercing as star Mollica’s eyes and chiseled face. But the performance is affecting.

| Original Score: B | Jan 22, 2024