Rihanna Clears 2016 Hit for Jordan Firstman’s Cannes Film Club Kid

1 articles · Updated · Hollywood Reporter · May 15

Three weeks before Cannes, Jordan Firstman still lacked rights to Rihanna’s 2016 song “Sex With Me,” which he had built into Club Kid’s opening scene and refused to replace with alternate footage.
Rihanna approved the track after Firstman’s team got the finished film to her, preserving a sequence shot without prior clearance and rescuing a key creative gamble in his feature debut.
Club Kid will premiere in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, where the indie film is emerging as a closely watched sales title.
The film follows a fading party promoter who discovers he has a 10-year-old son, drawing on Firstman’s years in comedy writers’ rooms and his immersion in New York and Berlin party scenes.

How does a party promoter's worst nightmare—a secret son—become a story of redemption in the new film 'Club Kid'?

Will audiences embrace Jordan Firstman's divisive persona in his critically acclaimed debut film about a gay party promoter?

After its Cannes triumph, will 'Club Kid' secure the global theatrical release its director insists it deserves?