The film Tom at the Farm, by Xavier Dolan, a 26-year-old upstart director, festival darling, and Cannes favorite, will head to FilmScene, 118 E. College St., for a one-night-only screening at 11 p.m. Saturday.

The director — who wrote, directed, and stars in Farm— has had one of the most dynamic careers of budding directors in the last seven years. His work has premièred in Toronto, Venice, and Cannes — where, in 2014, his film Mommy shared the Grand Jury Prize with the iconic French director Jean-Luc Godard’s polarizing Goodbye to Language.

Tom at the Farm — which Dolan adapted from Michel Marc Boulard’s play of the same name — is a psychosexual thriller that follows its eponymous protagonist on a trip to the country for the funeral of his boyfriend Guillaume. When Tom arrives, the family of his ex-lover expects a woman, and so Tom decides to hide his true identity to prevent any drama from unfolding during the grieving period.

Things take a turn for the worse when Guillaume’s brother, Francis, begins to make advances at Tom, and Tom realizes there is a dark side to the family’s history that Guillaume didn’t reveal to him.

 Farmhad a limited release in the United States on Aug. 15 in the country’s culture centers, and Iowa City’s FilmScene is now among an elite group of top-tier cinemas that have scored showings of the film.

Farm is recognized by critics as being the film that proves that Dolan an upstart is no more, and Dolan the auteur has arrived.

— by Girindra Selleck