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Mysterious Skin

Book to Screen: Film Screening

Hay Festival 2026, 

A screening of New Queer Cinema troublemaker Gregg Araki’s incendiary yet sensitive tale. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the film busts open the dark secrets of the American heartland, and stages an unforgettable reckoning with trauma. One of the best coming-of-age films of the 2000s.

In Mysterious Skin, Brian Lackey is a young man who went missing for five hours when he was eight, an event he’s convinced was an alien abduction. In the same small Kansas town, teenage hustler Neil McCormick is a confused outsider with a dark past. Both young men pursue a self-destructive path that will lead them toward each other.

18+ years
Mysterious Skin