“It’s just garbage. It’s made by trashmen for trashmen.”

Todd Rohal is discussing his newest film, and while most publicists might bristle at his sales pitch, “Fuck My Son!” is not most films. Based on a subversive French comic book by Johnny Ryan, an overbearing mother (Robert Longstreet) kidnaps a woman (Tipper Newton) with the hope that she’ll sleep with her gruesomely disfigured son, Fabian (Steve Little).

Yet any logline belies the batshit, subversive movie that is set to debut on Sept. 10 in TIFF’s Midnight Madness section. Fabian is a mutated beast covered in warts and pus, with a Lovecraftian penis that’s always in motion. Unbelievable violence happens to both a little girl and operatic supergroup The Three Tenors. A meta introduction to the movie is filled with swinging genitals. Those are just a few of the elements that encouraged Rohal to self-designate the film with a throwback X rating, which he sees as a way to push the limits of free speech.

“Everyone says, ‘You know, you can’t call the movie “Fuck My Son!”‘ But whose rules are we following now? Who’s saying you can’t do this stuff?” he says. “Where does our censorship begin and end? When I was writing this, it was more focused on Johnny stuff, his getting banned on Instagram. But now it’s even the Stephen Colbert stuff. Project 2025 says, ‘Pornographers can get sent to prison,’ and it’s like, ‘So if we say this is Rated X, are we actually putting ourselves in danger?’ I do think it’s, unfortunately, taking on some more relevance in terms of censorship.”

Rohal is a devotee of cult cinema and has worked as a writer and director on many left-of-center movie and TV productions, from films like 2011’s “The Catechism Cataclysm” and 2015’s “Uncle Kent 2” to work on Adult Swim projects. He says that “Fuck My Son!” scratched a unique creative itch.

“It feels like theres’s a void in the world of uncompromised things that aren’t meant for Netflix, that aren’t designed to appeal to a corporation,” Rohal says. “It’s been a wonderful feeling, because I feel more connected to film as an art form, as crazy as it is. It’s like John Waters movies gave me permission to think differently, or seeing ‘Gummo’ in the theater for the first time and watching people boo it was exciting. As much as filmmakers don’t want their movies booed, I loved that there was an unintentional divisiveness that came out of it.”

When Rohal started reading Ryan’s “Fuck My Son!” comic book, inspiration struck quickly — but he almost psyched himself out of it.

“I got halfway through it and thought, ‘Oh my God, I know how to make this,’” Rohal says. “It’s this little play that I could shoot in Austin. I was praying it would get too expensive by the end of the movie, so I wouldn’t think about doing it. And I got to the end and was like, ‘Oh, I know what I would add to this.’ I spent two weeks talking myself out of it and thinking, ‘I can’t. I’m too much of a prude. I would never do something with nudity in it.’ It was terrifying.’

But Rohal thought about his favorite filmmakers and was inspired to push himself.

“I thought, ‘Wait, Todd, everyone that you love and admire — from John Waters to George Kuchar to the underground filmmakers —I wanted to be able to say I made a movie like that. It was this dare: You admire these people who had success in their lives, but also just as easily could exist on the fringes.”

Given the wild subject matter, Rohal says the film is intended to be watched with an audience, and after the TIFF debut, it will be limited to a theatrical-only experience for quite some time.

“It’s built from the get-go to not be on streaming,” he says. “Every investor that put money into this, the intention was ‘We just want this to be something that’s in theaters that plays midnight if that is possible to keep going’ — If theaters still exist. We’re not looking to sell it to Netflix. We want it to be something that feels like you want to sneak into this if you’re underage. Your parents will be mad at you if they find out that you saw this.”

Rohal says that theaters are interested in this unique experience, and he believes screenings will be set at indie-friendly cinemas like NYC’s IFC Center and Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse by mid-October, with the intention to spread to screens nationwide. He cites recent microbudget hits like “The People’s Joker” and “Hundreds of Beavers” as the power of slow rollouts for potential cult hits.

“Distributors don’t have the patience for that, even the best ones don’t, and it needs to have a long life, some patience, and the hope in humanity that there’s still an appetite for communal experience, of seeing something disgusting and shocking and weird and unpredictable,” Rohal says. “Not just a corporate product. Gimmicks and exploitation have saved film over and over. I want to find the 2025 version of that.”