“You’re not alone, Shy,” says Steve (Cillian Murphy) to his student, Shy (Jay Lycurgo). “That’s the whole point.” Set in a British school for troubled young me in the 1990s, the film Steve follows the school’s titular head teacher and his students over the course of a day in their lives, as they struggle to figure out how to exist in the world. One thing becomes clear though: They can’t do it on their own. The best — and only — way forward is through community and care.

Below, director Tim Mielants discusses how he made this film in collaboration with its writer, Max Porter (who adapted the screenplay from his best-selling novel, Shy), its star, Murphy (who also produced the film with Alan Moloney, his partner in Big Things Films), and actors like Lycurgo and all the boys who made up the student body in the fim.

On how Steve was adapted from Shy

“[Shy] was written structurally in a very unconventional way. I said to Cillian and Alan, "I have to get my head around it because I don't know how to do this." And then I locked myself up. But around that period, I was going through videos I had shot in the ’90s, because my father got Alzheimer's and I wanted to get back to who he was, who we used to be, because he's not that person anymore that I used to know. And I wanted to get back there. I also lost a brother, and I want to see him again in my grandparents again.

“In the ’90s, I was shooting constantly, and I was going back through these tapes and I felt some kind of emotional gravity there, which I felt could be the heart of the movie. I started in documentary [filmmaking] and I was asking myself questions like, What would I do as a filmmaker if I spent one day there at school? And I said, I would go immediately for the beauty and the pain, and I would interview these boys. So I asked Max, “Can you please write me interviews for the boys? You know these characters." And so we started with the boys when I was doing castings. And I felt immediately the power of it. The camera becomes a silent observer, and… the energy is the boys. It's about capturing the internal mentality of the boys with all the chemicals going through their bodies and the energy they have.”

On working with the boys in Steve

“I think that's all came down to the rehearsal period. Some of them had never acted before, and I felt I wanted to create a group. So I asked the producer to invest in two week kind of boot camp and doing Stanislavski exercises. The first day we didn't do anything on the floor. We were just talking real deeply about all the connections between each boy, and it was together with the boys themselves. Cillian, Max, and I were there, and we were just talking about how each of one is looking at someone else in the different direction.

“And then we start improvising based on all these different relationships. And I start giving them inspirations and things that can angle, and different situations that were possible were not in the script. And Max was just observing what was possible. But what really came down to the real great performance, is I asked them to talk about their own lives. They had to bring pictures of themselves that were important in their own lives as a starting point to talk about.

“What happened is that the characters became the boys, and the boys became the characters. And that changed a lot because they were not performing anymore. 

“Cillian was just observing the boys to know what kind of role they had to play. One moment, I yelled through the room and said, “Steve just died.” And... how these boys reacted to it. I remember Jay going through, taking a chair and just smashing it again. They all went off. It was like amazing acting. It was about giving the opportunity for the boys to make mistakes.”

What it was like working with Jay Lycurgo in Steve

“With Jay, he found a groove real soon. Sometimes you have to make mistakes, but he was immersing himself and I was more giving him fresh notes and approaches to interpret a scene, and always finding ways for him to approach it from a different angle to keep it fresh for him, because he was really totally into it. I remember he had that Walkman, he was listening to that Walkman all the time; he was so immersed. After we wrapped, he was still in character. That's something I never experienced before, and I felt like Jay was very much Shy, I think.” 

What he hopes people take from the movie

“I hope this movie is a starting point for discussion and contemplation. I don’t feel entitled to say what it is. I think that's up to viewers. I put my heart and soul into this movie, and now it's their story, whatever they want to make out of it. I hope that it can be an inspiration that this story is being told. I was very dyslexic and a lost case, and thanks to a few teachers who refused to give up on me, I'm here right now. Teachers are so important. They're building our future.” 

Steve is streaming now on Netflix.