May 8, 2026 3:07pm PT

How School Shooting Satire ‘Our Hero, Balthazar’ Director Oscar Boyson Found His Style While Making Movies With Greta Gerwig and the Safdie Brothers

William Earl

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William Earl

@beautifulbill

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Courtesy of Picturehouse

The social satire “Our Hero, Balthazar” has an incredibly dark logline: A young man named Balthazar (Jaeden Martell), who spends time forcing tears for online videos lamenting gun violence, travels to Texas to intervene with a person who he believes to be a potential school shooter (Asa Butterfield).

Despite the pitch-black premise, co-writer and director Oscar Boyson‘s film has been steadily finding new audiences. After debuting at the Tribeca Festival in 2025, Picturehouse and WG Pictures took a chance on distribution, and a measured rollout began on March 26. Audiences have been steadily growing, and the film begins a nationwide rollout Friday. Not bad for a tonally tricky film about school shootings — one that was challenging to fund, but could find increased word-of-mouth success in a year where A24’s thematically-adjacent “The Drama” became a box office hit.

How School Shooting Satire 'Our Hero, Balthazar' Director Oscar Boyson Found His Style While Making Movies With Greta Gerwig and the Safdie Brothers