Audience Award WInner Sonoma 2026 International Film Festival
Opens Friday April 10, 2026 in NYC and L.A.
Wide US release April 17, 2026: Tickets at Fandango AMC
UK Cinemas 15 May 2026
Michaela Coel (Lori) and Ian McKellen (Julian)
Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers is a blackly comic chamber piece centered on Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), a once‑legendary painter who has curdled into a glorious spectacle of ego, cruelty, and theatrical decay. Now broke, reclusive, and defiantly unrepentant, Julian spends his days hurling insults as a notorious TV art‑show judge and recording cutting personalized video messages for strangers, treating each cameo as a miniature performance of disdain and wit. When his estranged children scheme to profit from a cache of unfinished paintings after his death, their plot brings a skilled art forger (Michaela Coel) into Julian’s orbit—triggering a duel of intellect, vanity, and manipulation. At once hilarious and unsettling, the film revels in Julian’s outrageousness: a man who mistakes cruelty for honesty, spectacle for legacy, and turns even his own irrelevance into an act of savage charisma.
Screenplay by Ed Solomon
“…at times incredibly funny, comedy drama with plot reversals that make it feel like it’s on the verge of a thriller.”—Benjamin Lee, The Guardian
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