🎬 Ponyboi

The film tracks a high-stakes, breathless 24 hours in the life of Ponyboi (River Gallo), an intersex Latinx youth working as a sex worker at a gritty neon-lit truck stop in New Jersey. Ponyboi dreams of escaping his bleak reality, abandoning the industrial highways, and building a legitimate, peaceful life. His primary source of hope rests in his secret romantic entanglement with Vincenzo (Dylan O'Brien), a smooth-talking, fiercely volatile low-level drug dealer operating within the local criminal underworld.

Ponyboi's world completely shatters when a routine drug transaction takes a devastatingly violent turn. Suddenly caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous local mob outfit, Ponyboi becomes a hunted target on the run through the state's industrial underbelly. As he frantically attempts to evade capture, he is forced to confront the harsh reality of Vincenzo's manipulative nature, while finding unexpected pockets of solidarity from individuals like Angel (Victoria Pedretti) and Goldie (Indya Moore). Over the course of one long, adrenaline-fueled night, Ponyboi's fight for survival evolves into a gritty, transformative journey toward reclaiming his bodily autonomy, processing childhood trauma, and finding the strength to escape his abusers.

💡 Production & Cultural Context 🧠
A Landmark Intersex Milestone: Ponyboi represents an unprecedented moment in cinematic history as the very first narrative feature film to be written by, directed by, and starring an openly intersex person. Expanded from River Gallo's award-winning 2019 USC thesis short film, the feature serves as a crucial corrective to decades of cinematic erasure, portraying an intersex protagonist with agency, sexuality, and depth.

Executive Backing by Queer Pioneers: The production attracted major creative champions behind the scenes. Substantial independent financing and production support were steered by executive producers Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, both longtime advocates who recognized the cultural weight of Gallo’s unique screenplay.

Star-Studded Indie Transformation: The thriller serves as a phenomenal showcase for mainstream actors subverting their typical casting archetypes. Dylan O'Brien sheds his clean-cut YA persona to deliver a terrifyingly manic, magnetic performance, while Victoria Pedretti and Murray Bartlett ground the high-octane thriller with raw emotional depth.