Bertil Nilsson’s “Masc” is a quietly absorbing character study built around a deceptively difficult idea: watching a man who is, himself, watching everyone else. Rather than placing its lead character in the usual position of narrative control, the film follows Robin, played by Joshua Griffin, as he searches for a sense of self by studying the men around him.
Robin is queer, biracial and neurodivergent, and “Masc” treats identity as something complicated by the labels and expectations society places on him. Across the span of a year, he changes his appearance five times, moves through different jobs and social spaces, and tests out versions of himself in relation to other people. He works as an apprentice handyman and as a lab assistant, attempts to enter the rhythms of a therapy group, and looks for connection with men his own age.
What makes the film distinctive is that Robin rarely drives the action in a conventional way. He is often reserved, closely observing rather than declaring himself. He absorbs the gestures, behaviors and social codes of the men around him, trying to understand why they act as they do and whether their mannerisms might offer him a workable model for living.
A performance centered on restraint
Griffin’s performance is central to the film’s effect. Robin appears in almost every frame, and the role depends less on big outward revelations than on small physical and emotional shifts. The source of the film’s tension is internal: Robin is constantly taking in information, measuring himself against others, and attempting to build a personality through imitation, attention and experimentation.
That process gives “Masc” a compelling intimacy. Nilsson wrote the film from a story he developed with Griffin, and the collaboration between director and actor comes through in the naturalness of Robin’s encounters. The situations have an observational quality, at times suggesting the texture of documentary, even as the film remains clearly fictional in its construction.
Nilsson’s approach also allows the audience to sit inside Robin’s uncertainty. Because Robin is frequently watching others for cues, viewers are placed in a similar position, reading behavior and trying to understand what each interaction means to him. The result is a film less interested in plot mechanics than in the subtle, sometimes uncomfortable act of figuring out how to be.
Fiction, fantasy and fear
While “Masc” often feels closely observed, Nilsson also uses fiction to enter Robin’s inner life. The film includes scenes that reveal not only what happens to Robin, but how he imagines events might unfold. One of the clearest examples comes when Robin spends the night with his friend Benji, played by Tega Alexander. The sequence gives shape to Robin’s shifting feelings: what he wants, what he worries about, and how vulnerable he becomes when desire and anxiety occupy the same space.
That scene is described as both carefully composed and tender in its portrayal, and it underscores the film’s larger interest in the difference between social performance and private feeling. Robin’s outward watchfulness can make him seem opaque, but “Masc” repeatedly finds ways to make his interior progress tangible.
Griffin’s physical control is a major part of that achievement. In solitary moments, Robin’s body changes; when alone, he appears to move with a greater ease and rhythm. In close-up, his eyes carry the character’s alertness, suggesting someone who is always registering the world around him, even when he says very little.
Masculinity as something learned
The film’s title points directly to its core concern: masculinity as a set of behaviors, assumptions and signals that Robin is trying to decode. “Masc” is not presented as a simple story of self-discovery in which a hidden identity is merely waiting to be uncovered. Instead, the film understands identity as something shaped through imitation, desire, rejection and negotiation.
Robin studies the men in his orbit as though their behavior might provide a usable structure for his own life. He borrows from them, tests what fits, and measures the distance between who he is and who he thinks he might need to become. For a character existing outside prescribed ideas of masculinity, the film suggests that becoming oneself can begin with the difficult work of reading everyone else.
One of the film’s most emotionally exposed passages comes when Robin spends time with his father, played by Lincoln Conway. In that long scene, Robin is less an observer than a son simply existing in his father’s presence, though not without discomfort. His fears of being unloved remain, but the moment allows him to appear more unguarded than elsewhere in the film.
That encounter gives “Masc” one of its most resonant questions: whether the form of masculinity Robin has been searching for might be tied not to the strangers and peers he studies, but to a more familiar model. Nilsson does not reduce the answer to a simple conclusion. Instead, the film stays with Robin’s uncertainty, allowing his identity to emerge as something felt, tested and continually revised.
As a character study, “Masc” is defined by patience and sensitivity. Its drama lies in observation, and its power comes from how carefully Nilsson and Griffin render the act of looking, copying and becoming. The film turns a quiet search for selfhood into something visceral, empathetic and unusually precise.