The latest from Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger is a more modest affair, as it’s name implies. It’s a surreal noir film, set in the present but harking back to vintage Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Colin Farrell dons a pencil moustache and a velvet suit as Lord Freddy Doyle, an aristocratic gambler on a long losing streak in Macau. With his line of credit running out and a mysterious agent on his tail (Tilda Swinton), Freddy seeks a desperate pact with casino hostess Dao Ming (Fala Chen).
Berger and Oscar-winning cinematographer James Friend transform Macau into a shimmering dream state, where nothing is quite what it seems.
Ballad of a Small Player is a trippy, psychedelic anxiety attack held together by Farrell’s extraordinary performance and Berger’s precise eye.
Mark Johnson, Awards Watch
Operatic… made with force and finesse.
Benjamin Lee, The Guardian
Edward Berger
Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deannie Yip, Alex Jennings
USA
2025
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Jeanne Tremsal, Luke Rivett, Mark Nolting, Rowan Joffe, Lawrence Osborne, Ellie Gibbons
Producer
Mike Goodridge, Edward Berger, Matthew James Wilkinson
Screenwriter
Rowan Joffe
Cinematography
James Friend
Editor
Nick Emerson
Original Music
Volker Bertelmann
Production Design
Jonathan Houlding
Also Playing
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.