A Different Man

"Edward" (Sebastian Stan) is a facially disfigured man, stuck in a rundown apartment, whose life isn't really going anywhere fast. Then he gets a new neighbour. "Ingrid" (Renato Reinsve) is a writer who befriends him and promises him a part in her play. Meantime, his doctors manage to get him on a radical course of treatment that gradually returns his face to a more normal visage. Returning to his flat, and with some fairly grotesque things emerging from his leaky ceiling, he realises that nobody recognises him anymore so he has to assume a different identity. That's when he discovers that "Ingrid" is, indeed, putting on a play - and that the old "Edward" is the title and the topic. He wants the part. It's his part. How to get it though wit...

A Different Man delights with a delicious paradox: take a character who feels outcast because of his looks, and then voila. Melt away his differences. Would he suddenly fit in? Would his life instantly turn around? Or is success far more than skin deep?

New York writer-director Aaron Schimberg wants us to ponder if Edward is better off than he was before. We're caught between wondering if he's a victim of societys need for normalcy or a victim of his own victim complex.

With his third feature, Schimberg creates a tantalising fantasy with oodles to say about perception, identity and inner happiness. His dark comic story peers deep into how we deal with otherness in society and how we often revert, in our private moments, to ...