It’s no big secret that the world holds a narrow view on what is beautiful. It’s there on screens, in photos, and in the judgemental gaze of every passerby. Otherness is seen as monstrousness. In Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, the notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is excavated and complicated in a darkly hilarious satire about what it means to be attractive, inside and out.

Edward (Sebastian Stan) is a struggling New York actor with neurofibromatosis, a condition that manifests in sizeable facial tumours, meaning the gigs he books amount to corporate training videos on treating disabled co-workers with respect. Then things seem to be turning around for him: playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves in next door, and even seems to take an interest in him. Later, he’s offered the chance to take part in an experimental drug trial that promises to cure his ailment.