TIFF 2025: Colin Farrell Is the Face of a Gambler’s Delusion in ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

TIFF 2025: Colin Farrell Is the Face of a Gambler’s Delusion in ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

Header Image Source: Netflix

Flashing lights, gorgeous locales, and velvet suits for days, Ballad of a Small Player is a neon nightmare, or cyber-lit dream for card players and drama fans hungry for Edward Berger’s latest. The snappy political scented epic, Conclave , put the director firmly into awards conversations, and he’s returned with a new kind of tale that’s less physically grounded and sheds the ensemble for a study of one man.

Lord Doyle ( Colin Farrell ) is a snappily dressed man though he’s often drenched in stress sweat that smells of last night’s libations. Though he walks and talks like a high roller to whom money is a toy, the man bopping around Macau is deep in gambling d