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Official Trailer for Macau’s ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ with Colin Farrell

by Alex Billington
October 7, 2025
Source: YouTube

“What I see is a man way beyond any redemption.” This looks like one helluva sweaty thriller! Netflix has revealed the full official trailer for the vivid gambling movie titled Ballad of a Small Player, the latest creation from the acclaimed German filmmaker Edward Berger following All Quiet on the Western Front & Conclave most recently. This premiered at the 2025 Telluride & Toronto Film Festivals last month. And it hits theaters briefly later in October before it’s streaming on Netflix this month. When his past and his debts start to catch up with him, a high-stakes gambler / corrupt English lawyer laying low in Macau in the East encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to salvation. The book it’s based on is also described as a “vivid and feverish portrait of a soul in self-inflicted purgatorio.” Exactly what this looks like. The film stars Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle, with Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, and Tilda Swinton as a private investigator chasing him. With cinematography by James Friend (All Quiet on the Western Front, “The Acolyte”), and music composed by Volker Bertelmann. Even though this has pretty bad reviews from the festivals, I’m still curious about it anyway. The visuals and intensity of Farrell’s performance look good.

Here’s main official trailer (+ poster) for Edward Berger’s film Ballad of a Small Player, from YouTube:

Ballad of a Small Player Teaser Trailer

Ballad of a Small Player Teaser Poster

You can watch the teaser trailer for Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player film right here for the first look again.

Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) is laying low in Macau – spending days & nights on the casino floors, drinking heavily and gambling what little money he has left. Struggling to keep up with his fast-rising debts, he is offered a lifeline by the mysterious Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino employee with secrets of her own. In hot pursuit is Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) – a private investigator ready to confront Doyle with what he is running from. As Doyle tries to climb to salvation, the confines of reality start to close in. Ballad of a Small Player is directed by the Academy Award-nominated German filmmaker Edward Berger, director of the films Strait-Jacket, Sidewalk Hotel, Smelly Dinners, Wanderbread, Gomez: Heads or Tails, Jack, All My Loving, 2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and Conclave previously, and TV series “Deutschland 83” & “Patrick Melrose”. The screenplay is written by Rowan Joffe (of Last Resort, 28 Weeks Later, The American, Brighton Rock, Before I Go To Sleep, Locked In). Based on the novel of the same name from Lawrence Osborne. Produced by Mike Goodridge, Edward Berger, Matthew James Wilkinson. It premieres at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival this fall. Netflix will then debut Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player film in select US theaters briefly on October 15th, 2025, and streaming on Netflix starting October 29th, 2025.

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Anyone who had doubts about “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White’s ability to carry a movie as the Boss can put them away. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” focuses on the period after Springsteen’s rise to fame in 1981 when he settles in a lakehouse in New Jersey to create the album “Nebraska,” laying down tracks by himself with new technology that was far from professional level.

The movie traces his fraught early years with his alcoholic father (Stephen Graham) and the counterbalancing gentle support coming from his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong). The movie has some performances, but mostly Cooper and White are looking inside Springsteen, as he faces depression and fights for his album to be realized the way he hears it: Spare, intimate, echoey. He sets aside obvious hit tracks like “Born in the USA” and “Glory Days” for a later recording, the eventual album smash “Born in the USA.”

Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal at the Telluride brunch

Who does that? Bruce. This movie could be a commercial success for Disney’s Twentieth Century Pictures, and proves that White is a star. Acting award nominations, certainly, are in the offing, as reviews are otherwise mixed.

Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere — ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere’20th Century Fox

Opening night also brought Edward Berger’s return to Telluride a year after “Conclave,” which went on to eight Oscar nominations and an adapted screenplay win. “Ballad of a Small Player,” adapted by Rowan Joffe from the Lawrence Osborne novel, is a meticulously mounted, gorgeous jewel of a movie set in the glittering gambling palaces of Macau. For all its showy camera moves, the movie centers on its tortured protagonist, a seedy gambling addict who is running out of time. Sporting a mustache, cravat, bright velvet jackets, and yellow gloves, Colin Farrell as con man “Lord Doyle” runs the gamut of sweaty emotions as he wins, loses, and faces desperate thoughts. The hotel is chasing him for his bill, and a private detective (Tilda Swinton) is chasing him for stealing money from a wealthy old woman. How far will his addiction take him?

Farrell could win some support from the Academy actors branch for taking on this moral steeplechase where the outcome is far from clear. We root for him to find his way, as the exit door gets smaller and smaller. Netflix is pushing the film for awards.

Next up: Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” screens Saturday as well as the first arrival from Venice, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia.”