Marty Supreme arrives in cinemas regionally on 19 March, bringing one of this year\u2019s most talked-about films to the big screen just days ahead of the Oscars. Led by Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, winner of Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards and Critics\u2019 Choice Awards, the nine-time Oscar-nominated film is set to be one of the season\u2019s key theatrical releases.<\/p>\n
Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, a bold, kinetic portrait of a fast-talking New York City dreamer, hellbent on turning an overlooked sport into his per sonal springboard to glory. It\u2019s 1952, and Marty is stuck selling shoes in his uncle\u2019s cramped Lower East Side store – a job he didn\u2019t choose, in a life that feels like it was pre-ordained. Table tennis has become his escape hatch. Not just from the store, but from the world that expects him to stay in his lane: his family, his neighborhood, the unspoken rules of who gets to matter and who doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The problem is, in post-war America, table tennis is barely more respected than tiddlywinks – making Marty\u2019s dream look like a joke to everyone but him. But ridicule isn\u2019t his only hurdle. He\u2019s also got an overbearing mother, a pregnant girlfriend, empty pockets, and the entire capitalist system to contend with. Still, not even the vampires of industry can stop Marty from becoming Marty Supreme – because for him, every obstacle is a reason to double down.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarty is an ambitious young man who wants to be recognized as the greatest table tennis player in the world,\u201d says Chalamet. \u201cWhile he may actually be the greatest in the world, by way of his circumstances and the place he finds himself in life, he also happens to be a petty young adult on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the dawn of the 1950s, when the story opens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMarty is the quintessential dreamer, in that he\u2019s the ultimate romantic and the most relentless optimist,\u201d says writer-director Josh Safdie, who co-wrote the original feature with his longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein. \u201cIt\u2019s a coming-of-age story, which explores how in youth an uncompromising individuality can be both freeing and restricting. For Marty, his blind faith in his dream leads him in an indirect way to true self-discovery\u2026to real change.\u201d<\/p>\n
With his seventh feature film – marking a seventeen-year career that began with his solo directorial debut The Pleasure of Being Robbed, acquired by IFC and premiering in Cannes in 2008 – Safdie brings his signature adrenaline-charged style and emotional heft to this globe-spanning epic. The result, researched and developed over many years, is a fresh, fun, full-throttle thrill-ride journeying from the Lower East Side to London, Paris, Tokyo and the Great Pyramids and back.<\/p>\n
Featuring impeccable craftsmanship from a team of gifted collaborators and a stacked-to-the-rafters ensemble cast – including Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler Okonma (Tyler, the Creator in his feature-film debut), Kevin O\u2019Leary, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Emory Cohen and a breakout turn by Odessa A\u2019zion as Marty\u2019s irrepressible girlfriend Rachel, Marty Supreme is a breakneck ride through obsession and spectacle, as brash and exhilarating as its hero.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarty\u2019s commitment to his dream relies on self-belief, but in the end it\u2019s the belief from others that proves to be the most important,\u201d says Safdie. \u201cHis entire life is propped on belief. Those who believe with him are along for the ride and those who are not are simply run over. Marty Supreme follows him through this Sisyphean journey to get to that place.\u201d<\/p>\n