
2025
Our Hero, Balthazar
A privileged, performative teen becomes convinced an online troll is a school shooter and drives across the country to confront him. Our Hero, Balthazar is a jet-black satire of performative activism, fragile masculinity, and the hunger for attention in Gen Z culture.
Director
Oscar Boyson
Runtime
91 Minutes
Country
United States
Classification
Unclassified 15+
Our Hero, Balthazar is a jet-black satire that confronts the absurd extremes of digital-age masculinity and self-validation. Balthy (Jaeden Martell), a wealthy Manhattan teenager, creates tearful gun control videos for social media to win over his activist crush. When a provocative troll catches his attention, he convinces himself the person is a school shooter and impulsively drives to Texas to confront him.
What unfolds is a darkly comic and unsettling journey through solitude, entitlement, and the collapse between empathy and spectacle. Balthy’s uneasy connection with his troll, Soloman (Asa Butterfield) becomes a hallucinatory mirror of performative empathy and social alienation. Anchored by Martell’s striking vulnerability and Boyson’s sharp direction, Our Hero, Balthazar skewers how validation-seeking, masculinity and performance intersect in the age of social media. This satire cuts deep, refusing easy sympathy, instead laying bare the perils of living for the algorithm.
What unfolds is a darkly comic and unsettling journey through solitude, entitlement, and the collapse between empathy and spectacle. Balthy’s uneasy connection with his troll, Soloman (Asa Butterfield) becomes a hallucinatory mirror of performative empathy and social alienation. Anchored by Martell’s striking vulnerability and Boyson’s sharp direction, Our Hero, Balthazar skewers how validation-seeking, masculinity and performance intersect in the age of social media. This satire cuts deep, refusing easy sympathy, instead laying bare the perils of living for the algorithm.
“An uncompromising satire about the crisis facing young men in America.”
The Film Stage
"A satire of male loneliness that is as disturbing as it is hilarious.”
Exclaim!
Tribeca
Film Credits
Director
Oscar Boyson
Year
2025
Country
United States
Language
English
Type
Feature & Fiction
Program Strand
World Cinema
Producer
Oscar Boyson, Ricky Camilleri, David Duque-Estrada, Miles Skinner & Jon Wroblewski
Writer
Oscar Boyson & Ricky Camilleri
Cinematographer
Christopher Messina
Editor
Erin DeWitt & Nate DeYoung
Cast
Becky Ann Baker, Anna Baryshnikov, Chris Bauer, Jaeden Martell & Asa Butterfield
Film Source
Visit Films
Genre
Black Comedy & Satire
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