Club Kid (2026) Review: Firstman's Cannes Breakout — a Party Promoter, a 10-Year-Old Son and the 100% A24 Comedy That Wins You Over

A24's $17 million Cannes pickup is a fiercely funny, tender debut about a New York party promoter who suddenly has a 10-year-old son.

Jordan Firstman has spent a decade as the internet's most provocative party guest, so the surprise of Club Kid is how much it cares about a child. The Cannes breakout, which A24 bought for a reported $17 million after a five-way bidding fight, opens in limited release on November 6. It holds a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 99 reviews and an 85 on Metacritic, and it is the best-reviewed film of this weekend's new openers.

▶

Club Kid details →YouTube ↗

What Club Kid is about

Peter (Firstman) is a washed-up New York party promoter. He launched the party Club Labor in 2016 with his business partner Sophie (Cara Delevingne), and a decade later he is hungover most days and dealing drugs most nights. Then Arlo (newcomer Reggie Absolom), a 10-year-old he never knew he had, is delivered to his door, and Peter has to decide whether he can become the kind of adult a child can rely on. Diego Calva plays Oscar, the social worker whose steadying presence draws Peter toward a calmer life.

Firstman wrote and directed as well as starred, in his feature debut. The film premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes on May 15 and picked up Caméra d'Or and Queer Palm nominations. It runs 121 minutes and was shot on 35mm by Adam Newport-Berra, with a score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer.

A funny film with a stealth heart

Little White Lies critic Hannah Strong called it a "fiercely funny stealth tearjerker," and that is the right description. The first act is deliberately chaotic, and JoBlo's Chris Bumbray admitted the director's online persona "isn't my thing" before rating the film 9/10 and calling it one of the more impressive debuts in recent memory. The humour is acerbic, and the warmth arrives underneath it: as Peter learns to parent, he starts to confront the self-hatred driving the partying.

The father-and-son scenes are the beating heart of the film. Strong calls Absolom, a first-time actor, a "monumental find," and reviewers keep returning to how natural he and Firstman are together. Peter first rejects the boy and then surprises himself by turning out to be a natural father. The movie lets that happen slowly and without speeches.

Queer nightlife, shown with love

Screen Daily's Wendy Ide praised the film's depiction of queer party culture as "loving, authentic and non-judgemental," and said it could become a breakout indie hit. The supporting cast fills out that world: Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Colleen Camp, Eldar Isgandarov as the roommate Nicky, and Shygirl playing herself. Bumbray singles out Isgandarov, whose "philosopher from Azerbaijan" is a scene-stealer.

Where it is familiar

The criticisms are mild, and they are consistent. Strong notes that the father-child dynamic has been seen before, in films like Paper Moon and C'mon C'mon, and that the film is "familiar at its core." Bumbray says the story follows a predictable path, hitting its beats with style and humour. Another review found that Sophie's spiralling storyline irritatingly shifts focus away from Peter's journey. Those are small quibbles about a film whose execution is rarely in doubt.

Verdict

Club Kid is a confident, funny, surprisingly tender debut, and a rare case where the hype from Cannes holds up. Rotten Tomatoes stands at 100% (99 reviews, average 8.6/10 as of November 7), Metacritic at 85 from 18 critics, and IMDb at 8.2 from about 1,000 votes. Our FilmRated score is 90. It is in limited release now from A24, with a Gotham Awards Breakthrough Director nomination pending, and the official trailer below shows the tone well.