In his new BDSM dominatrix drama starring Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman, the “Mysterious Skin” director turns his attention to Gen Z.
Source: Indiewire.com
USA – As part of announcing the lineup for the 2026 edition of the film festival on Wednesday, Sundance gave eager cinephiles their first look at Gregg Araki’s highly anticipated new feature, “I Want Your Sex.”
See larger photo on: Indiewire.com
“I Want Your Sex,” which has been described as a BDSM dominatrix drama, has been generating excitement among critics and Araki fans alike — both of whom have had to wait over a decade to see the filmmaker’s return to the big screen. The film follows the boundary-pushing, age-gap romance between a renowned artist named Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) and her so-called sexual muse (Cooper Hoffman), who “finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal, and murder,” according to the synopsis
After largely taking a break from film directing — he’s stayed busy directing TV episodes and creating the Starz series “Now Apocalypse” — Araki seems poised to make his triumphant return with the psychosexual thriller, which has drawn parallels to his earlier work. Like the pioneering 1990s and early aughts titles that made him an icon of New Queer Cinema, “I Want Your Sex” appears to be interested in the tender and uncomfortable ways that people tap into sexual desire. But rather than angsty Gen X and millennial subjects eager to discover their queerness, its focus is on Gen Z and its highly publicized lack of interest in carnal relations.
In an interview with IndieWire last summer, Araki spoke with IndieWire about the film, which he compared to the 2022 S&M dark comedy “Secretary,” being borne out of his feelings about the younger generation’s relative sexlessness, which he finds “so shocking and strange.”
“Looking back on my life, sex and sexuality and sexual identity have been key to my entire being and life and development as a person, and that’s why my films tend to always focus on those,” the filmmaker said. “Olivia plays an artist in the movie, and she says things in the movie that I have said in interviews about how sex and sexuality are kind of what make us human,” he added. “They’re such an important part of growing up and figuring out who you are, so that’s part of the movie, the importance of sexuality, and Gen Z and how they’re not having sex.”
In the first-look image released on Wednesday, Hoffman is staring, almost dumbfounded, at a smirking, blonde-wigged Wilde, who is dressed for the part of dominatrix. But the image reveals little about the complexities between the generationally divided characters, which Hoffman also teased to IndieWire ahead of the film’s premiere.
“I am someone who is very interested with the idea of what will love make you do. ‘I Want Your Sex’ is a really intense adventure that this person goes on because he’s in love,” said Hoffman, who also recently starred in the Simon West action film “Old Guy,” though he’s best known for his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.”
“You can connect it to ‘Old Guy,’ [in] that my character lost a lot of love at a young age, and that drives [him] to kill people,” he added. “Where does it all stem from? It tends to stem from either a place of trying to gain [love] or grieve the loss of love. Not that those two movies are anywhere similar, but I do think that human beings all kind of stem from one place.”
“I Want Your Sex,” which Araki co-wrote with columnist and TV host Karley Sciortino, also stars Chase Sui Wonders and Charli XCX. The film will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026.
