Marty Supreme is not so much a sports film, as one about a dreamer. Or maybe a salesman: someone who knows how to market and pitch his dream to others. In Josh Safdie’s 1950s table tennis epic, Marty Mauser’s (Timothée Chalamet), a wiry, pencil-moustached, 23-year-old Jewish American, is driven by a near-delirious desire to become the best player in the world. That obsession unfolds against a rapidly shifting postwar landscape, where power belongs not to athletes but to pen moguls, and where a single table tennis match can carry the weight of a nation’s success story. “I’m Hitler’s worst nightmare,” Marty quips to journalists, as traditional notions of ambition collide with the entropic force of the new American Dream.
Loosely inspired by table tennis sensation Marty Reisman, Marty Supreme marks Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial effort since 2008’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed. In the years since, Safdie has become synonymous with the frenetic, hustler-driven cinema he made alongside his brother Benny, from Good Time (2017) to Uncut Gems (2019). Here, stepping out alone, it’s clear that he has materialised as a solo tour-de-force with one of the best films of 2025.
Jumping between multiple registers – the sports picture, screwball comedy, high society satire, romance, and even gangster film – Marty Supreme takes us on a topsy-turvy ride. Marty encounters a smattering of impossible Safdie-esque situations, each threatening to spiral as his get-rich-quick schemes collide with reality. He hustles his way through an orbit of characters drawn from Safdie’s brightest constellation: Abel Ferrera as a ruthless dog-owning gangster in New York; Kevin O’Leary as Marty’s punitive patron; Gwyneth Paltrow as a fading Hollywood starlet who is charmed into bed by Marty’s boyish cockiness; Tyler, the Creator as fellow hustler and most reliable friend; and Odessa A’zion, one of the film’s most exciting newcomers, as Marty’s on-off lover, hustling just as hard for his affection as he is for success.
Here, Josh Safdie talks to Dazed about the film’s focus on dreamers, his critique of the American Dream, his influences and his unique set-ups on set...