There are films that win you over with their subject matter, and then there are films like Marty Supreme, which win you over by transforming an unlikely premise into pure, pulsating cinema. A seemingly paradoxical story, a young man determined to become the greatest table tennis player in the world, evolves into a frenetic, nervy, and deeply moving portrait of ambition, identity, and obsession. For the cinephile viewer, this film behaves like a living organism: it sweats, trembles, strikes, and ultimately reveals its vulnerable heart.
The new film by Josh Safdie, starring Timothée Chalamet in a career-defining turn, is an explosive, high-voltage and profoundly human portrait of a dreamer who refuses to accept the place the world has assigned him. Set in 1952 New York, the film follows Marty Mauser, a 23-year-old shoe salesman in the Lower East Side whose ambition is met with smirks and disbelief.
This sports dramedy has officially become the most commercially successful global release in the history of A24. With worldwide box office revenues reaching $147 million, $93 million domestically and $54 million internationally, it surpassed even the Best Picture Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once, which grossed $142 million.
Chalamet delivers one of his boldest and most physically committed performances to date. As Marty Mauser, a character loosely inspired by table tennis legend Marty Reisman, he does not simply play the role, he inhabits it. His movements are sharp and restless, his gaze burns with near-dangerous intensity. The performance balances vulnerability and arrogance with remarkable precision, making Marty at once abrasive and magnetic. It is a reminder that star power matters only when it is backed by genuine artistic risk.
The screenplay is equally striking, a whirlwind mosaic of scenes, rhythms and fixations bearing Safdie’s unmistakable signature. New York in 1952 is not merely a backdrop but a psychological landscape: cramped rooms, underground halls, noise, sweat and the suffocating pressure of postwar America. Table tennis is filmed not as sport but as combat, existential duels shaped by kinetic editing and nerve-fraying sound design that transform each match into a battle for identity and survival.
Marty Supreme is cinema of obsession, cinema of character, cinema that believes in the force of movement and rhythm. A coming-of-age epic that refuses to be easy or comforting, choosing instead to remain alive, uncomfortable and fiercely passionate. For cinephiles, it is one of those rare films you do not simply watch, you feel it in your bloodstream.
From the underground ping-pong halls of New York to Europe and Asia, Marty’s journey unfolds as a postwar American fable about self-belief, the hunger for recognition, and the cost of ambition when no one else believes in your dream.
This is not just a sports film. It is a fever dream about becoming. Do not miss it.
Marty Supreme at Pantheon Theatre
Screenings:
14 February at 5.00 pm and 8.30 pm
14, 15, 17, 18, 24, 25 February at 8.30 pm
Diagorou 29, 1097 Nicosia