There’s a particular strain of Paul Schrader movie where desire isn’t a feeling so much as a failing—something men mistake for purpose until it starts eating their lives from the inside. With “Non Compos Mentis,” Latin for “not of sound mind,” the filmmaker behind “Taxi Driver” and “First Reformed” looked to be returning to that terrain again, only this time with wealth, inheritance, and a collapsing family unit as the pressure cooker.
As first reported by Deadline, the film is set to star Liam Hemsworth, Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Pidgeon, and Dianne Wiest, with the project positioned to hit the European Film Market while it seeks U.S. distribution.
Described as an erotic thriller, “Non Compos Mentis” follows two silver-spoon brothers as they deal with their mother’s slow descent into dementia. One is a buttoned-up New York defense attorney; the other is a ruthless corporate heir. Their brittle relationship fractures further when the attorney begins an affair with a much younger woman, setting off a triangle that spirals into obsession, betrayal, and a vicious fight over the family fortune. Who plays who, should be pretty opposite here especially as Sarah Pidgeon is one of the ingeune’s of the moment soon to start in FX‘s “Love Story.”
Schrader has been talking about this one for a while, framing it as a finance-world noir and even tagging it, with typical bluntness, as a “Malafemmena” picture—a “Black Widow” story. If that language sounds like a throwback, that’s partly the point: an unapologetically adult setup where desire is leverage, intimacy is strategy, and everyone’s moral bookkeeping gets audited in public.
What’s newly interesting here is the timing. Schrader already had another project that, on paper, looked like it would reach the finish line first: “The Basics of Philosophy,” his next “man in a room” entry built around a university philosophy professor, with Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella set to star. Reporting last summer pegged production to kick off in Missouri in July 2025, and subsequent coverage has said the film wrapped shooting around that window—meaning Schrader had that movie effectively in the rearview when this new “Non Compos Mentis” package came together for EFM.
So even if Schrader’s output can feel like a rolling set of overlapping puzzles—scripts developing, packages shifting, one project jumping the line—this one has the unmistakable smell of something real: a cast, a timetable, a market push, and a specific commercial lane.
If “Non Compos Mentis” is truly the one buyers respond to, it’ll also be a small, stubborn reminder that there’s still an audience for sleek, mid-budget adult thrillers that don’t apologize for being nasty, complicated, and rooted in character damage instead of IP slop. [Deadline]
