Julia Fischer knows the answer. That is rarely the problem. The harder question is what she does with that knowledge once everyone in the room starts measuring themselves against it.
Niki Byrne’s The Julia Set finds its best material in that tension. Julia, played by Chase Infiniti, is a freshman whose mathematical ability already places her far ahead of most of her classmates, yet she has developed a habit of hiding it. She looks at the equation. She works it out. Then she keeps quiet. Byrne returns to that behavior often enough that it becomes the film’s clearest expression of Julia’s character: intelligence has come easily to her, but taking up space has not.
Infiniti understands that distinction beautifully. Playing a genius can become a performance of genius, all frantic scribbling and dialogue engineered to remind us that somebody is brilliant. Infiniti takes the opposite route. Julia’s ability feels ordinary to Julia, which is exactly why it feels convincing to us. Her eyes linger on problems she has already solved, and the hesitation before she speaks tells us nearly as much as the answer itself.
Pascal, an older student and teaching assistant played by Christopher Briney, notices what Julia is doing. He invites her into an elite study group preparing for the Putnam Competition, a notoriously difficult undergraduate mathematics exam consisting of 12 problems across six hours. The group is run by Dr. Zatlan, played by Nina Hoss with such severe efficiency that even her limited screen time makes the classroom feel hostile.
Pascal also starts dating Julia, and this is where Byrne’s film becomes far less tidy than the mathematics surrounding it. At first, the relationship has a persuasive logic. Pascal and Julia speak the same intellectual language. Their conversations about mathematics give Julia something she rarely experiences elsewhere: recognition. Pascal is attracted to her intelligence, and Julia is drawn toward someone who appears capable of understanding it. Byrne lets their early exchanges carry enough excitement that the attraction makes emotional sense even with the uncomfortable imbalance created by Pascal’s position as her teaching assistant.
The warning signs arrive quickly. After performing poorly on a practice test, Pascal leaves the room, hits himself, punches a bulletin board and explodes in frustration. It is an effective scene because his anger is initially directed inward. His real problem is the possibility that he may not be as exceptional as he has spent his life believing. That distinction gradually disappears as Pascal’s admiration turns into jealousy once Julia proves herself the stronger mathematician. He blames her for distracting him, uses her work, manipulates her and escalates toward increasingly abusive behavior.
Briney can sell the earlier insecurity because he leaves enough charm around the edges to explain Julia’s attraction. The screenplay gives him much less room later. Pascal moves from damaged and competitive to so plainly destructive that the psychological complexity begins draining out of the relationship. This creates a problem for Julia as well. Academic intelligence offers no immunity from emotional manipulation, so her failure to recognize every warning immediately is hardly the issue. Byrne instead makes Pascal’s cruelty so obvious that Julia’s continued attachment sometimes feels driven by the screenplay’s need to keep them together.
The film understands these dynamics far better during a trip to Pascal’s family home. His father Aleksander, played by Jason Isaacs, is a celebrated mathematician whose intellectual confidence has hardened into domination. His mother Anne, played by Gillian Anderson, was once a gifted mathematician herself. Her own ambitions have gradually been diminished beside her husband’s career.
A chess match between Aleksander and Pascal becomes the movie’s strongest sequence. Byrne barely needs exposition because the game explains the relationship for her. Father and son compete with the intensity of people who have spent years confusing achievement with affection. Pascal’s insecurity suddenly has a history, and Isaacs makes Aleksander charismatic enough that his cruelty becomes socially believable rather than theatrically evil.
Anne represents one possible future for Julia: a brilliant woman who has slowly learned to reduce herself beside a man who requires intellectual superiority as proof of his own worth. Anderson plays much of this quietly, and the parallel is strongest before the script begins explaining it aloud. That matters because Byrne is often a better visual storyteller than her screenplay seems willing to trust.
One of the sharpest examples comes before the Putnam competition. Julia walks past a long line of men waiting for the restroom and enters the women’s room without waiting at all. The image communicates the gender imbalance of her academic world immediately. No speech about representation would improve it.
The same restraint appears whenever Byrne frames Julia as one of very few women inside mathematical spaces. Those moments show how easily a person can begin treating their own presence as an exception. The film also gestures toward race and class through Julia’s scholarship-dependent circumstances and Pascal’s wealthy, prestigious family, but those ideas receive less development. Chloe Bailey’s Erin, Julia’s roommate and friend, occasionally becomes responsible for voicing pressures that the film would have been stronger dramatizing with the confidence of that restroom scene.
The Putnam material eventually pulls the film toward familiar competition-movie structure. Dr. Zatlan becomes a variation on the intimidating coach, the study sessions function like training montages, setbacks arrive on schedule, and the exam provides an obvious final arena. Familiar structures can work when the characters inside them remain difficult to predict.
Byrne complicates that advantage by piling on stimulant abuse, escalating gaslighting, a car accident and increasingly forceful confrontations. The film becomes louder at roughly the same point that its ideas become simpler. That is frustrating because The Julia Set repeatedly shows that Byrne can do this with far greater precision: Infiniti withholding an answer, Julia walking into the empty women’s restroom, Pascal and his father turning chess into emotional warfare. Those scenes translate complicated ideas into behavior and images without asking the audience to complete much homework.
Julia herself understands something similar about mathematics. A correct solution can still be clumsy if it takes too long to reach the answer. There are cleaner methods, better routes, elegant shortcuts that reveal an understanding of the problem rather than brute force. Byrne has already found several of them. The strongest parts of The Julia Set make you wish she trusted them longer.
The Julia Set had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2026. The coming-of-age drama follows a gifted young mathematician who is recruited by a teaching assistant into an elite prep course for the world’s most demanding math competition.
Where to Watch The Julia Set (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: The Julia Set
Distributor: Potato Salad Cosmic Domination, The Gotham Group
Release date: September 11, 2026 (Toronto International Film Festival)
Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes (112 minutes)
Director: Niki Byrne
Writers: Niki Byrne
Producers and Executive Producers: Jeffrey Penman, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Lee Stollman, Nick Scherma, Tayler Haynes, Andrey Epifanov, Eleonora Granata-Jenkinson, Gillian Anderson, Margaret Black, Nicole G. Small, Chase Infiniti, Lauren Beveridge, Cecily Colahan, Art Williams, David Fensterstock
Cast: Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, Nina Hoss, Chloe Bailey, Carmen Ejogo, Nico Hiraga, Liz Lin, Alex Dillard
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Antonio Calvache
The Review
The Julia Set
The Julia Set is strongest when Niki Byrne trusts quiet behavior to carry complicated ideas. Chase Infiniti makes Julia’s buried confidence convincing, while the chess match with Pascal’s family reveals the psychological depth the film can reach. The trouble comes when Pascal’s deterioration becomes so extreme that ambiguity gives way to melodrama. Byrne has sharp visual instincts and a strong lead, yet her screenplay keeps explaining ideas her best scenes already express with far greater precision.
PROS
- Chase Infiniti’s restrained, convincing lead performance
- Excellent chess sequence with Jason Isaacs and Christopher Briney
- Strong visual treatment of gender imbalance
- Mathematics gives the drama a distinctive texture
CONS
- Pascal becomes increasingly cartoonish
- Toxic-romance arc loses psychological complexity
- Race and class themes receive limited development
- Later melodrama overwhelms subtler ideas
