Beautiful Boyis a biographical drama portraying a teenager’s struggle with meth addiction, based on the bestselling memoirs by father and son David and Nic Sheff, and is Belgian director and scriptwriter Felix Van Groeningen’s Englishlanguage debut.At the press conference they gave yesterday after the screening of their film in the Official Selection, Groeningen and Timothée Chalamet, the star of Beautiful Boy, thought that it might help in fighting the huge epidemic of drug addiction in the USA and act as a kind of mirror so that this problem could stop being a taboo and people could talk about it without a sense of shame or embarrassment. Chalamet stressed that addiction knew no boundaries and didn’t discriminate. He hoped that the audience would feel able to empathise with his character and see that it was something that could happen to anyone, while Groeningen thought it had been very important to make the film as it is not only about addiction, but is also about going through this and recovering. “It is full of unconditional love and hope.”

Gonzalo García Chasco