India, Nov. 6 -- Max Porter's Shy was never an easy book to adapt. Its pages thrummed with noise - an unfamiliar rhythm of self-interruption - the inside of a young man's fractured mind, which is tuned to the tempo of rage, regret, and sadness. Yet in Steve, director Tim Mielants and Cillian Murphy don't so much translate the text as play its note. The result is a film that feels less like an adaptation and more like an echo - raw, intimate, haunting, and devastatingly alive.

The film opens up with Steve (Murphy), head teacher of Stanton Wood, arriving on campus. A last chance reform school for boys with societal and behavioural issues, it is teeming with noise and chaos. Adding to it is the fact that there is a documentary crew, invited...