When Eva Green steps into the gilded, suffocating world of Geneva's expat elite, you know something’s about to rupture. The body-thriller Diamond Shitter, written and directed by Antonia Campbell-Hughes, has locked in its powerhouse cast: Ben Whishaw, Alessandro Nivola, and Raffey Cassidy—each playing a role in a story that turns luxury into a prison, and diamonds into a curse. Filming begins this fall in the Swiss city, where the quiet elegance of Lake Geneva masks a rot beneath the marble floors. This isn’t just another horror film. It’s a visceral scream about power, greed, and what happens when the body becomes the only truth left.
The Body as a Battlefield
At the center of Diamond Shitter is Raffey Cassidy’s character, Nollaig—a quiet, observant intern in a family that owns half of Geneva’s private banks. She steals a handful of uncut diamonds, thinking it’s a harmless act of rebellion. But when she swallows them, something changes. Her skin glows faintly at night. Her dreams are filled with whispers in languages she’s never learned. The diamonds don’t just sit in her stomach—they rewrite her. And the family? They don’t just notice. They start to fear her.
It’s a grotesque metaphor made literal: wealth doesn’t just corrupt—it consumes. And in Diamond Shitter, the body becomes the ledger where every sin is recorded in bone and blood. Campbell-Hughes, who uses they/them pronouns, calls it “a primal howl.” Not a jump-scare thriller. Not a supernatural ghost story. A body-horror fable where the horror isn’t the monster—it’s the silence of the rich.
A Cast That Breathes Life Into the Macabre
Eva Green plays Helen, the matriarch whose poise is a performance honed over decades of cocktail parties and discreet bribes. You’ve seen her as the seductress, the witch, the haunted soul—but here, she’s something rarer: a woman who has spent her life perfecting control, only to lose it to a teenager with a stomach full of stolen gems.
Ben Whishaw is Nigel, Helen’s husband—a man who speaks in legal jargon and avoids eye contact. He’s not cruel, not exactly. He’s just… indifferent. And that’s worse. Whishaw’s ability to make silence feel like a threat makes him perfect for a role where the real violence is emotional erasure.
Then there’s Alessandro Nivola as David, the family’s fixer. He’s the one who makes disappearances look like accidents. Nivola, known for his unnerving calm in films like The Good Lie and The Many Saints of Newark, brings a quiet menace that lingers like perfume in a closed room. These aren’t villains in capes. They’re CEOs, diplomats, art collectors. People who believe they’re above consequences.
And then there’s Campbell-Hughes themselves—in a supporting role, they appear as a cleaning woman who sees too much. It’s a quiet cameo, but it carries weight. After all, this story was born from their own experience living in Geneva’s international bubble. “I watched people who had everything,” they told Screen Daily, “and still looked hungry.”
A Film Built on Three Nations, One Vision
Diamond Shitter is an Irish-Swiss-British co-production, a rare alignment of funding bodies that speaks to its ambition. Screen Ireland, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, and the British Film Institute (BFI) all backed development—rare for a genre film, especially one this uncompromising.
Produced by Sleeper Films’ Rory Gilmartin—who brought us Herself and Rosie—the film carries the same emotional precision as those Irish dramas, but with a surreal, almost mythic edge. The budget? Not enormous. But every euro, franc, and pound is spent on texture: the weight of silk against skin, the sound of a diamond scraping against teeth, the way light catches a tear in a velvet curtain.
International sales are handled by Beta Cinema, which has already placed the film in its slate for the upcoming European Film Market. That’s not just a sales pitch—it’s a declaration. This isn’t a niche oddity. It’s a contender.
From It Is in Us All to a New Kind of Horror
Campbell-Hughes’ debut, It Is in Us All, won a special jury prize at SXSW in 2022 for its raw, intimate portrayal of masculinity and transformation. It was quiet. Haunting. A film where the horror lived in the spaces between words. Diamond Shitter takes that same sensitivity and dials it into a fever dream.
“I’ve been writing this for over a decade,” they said. “It started as a dream I had after a night at a Geneva gala—everyone smiling, clinking glasses, while their children sat alone in corners, staring at their phones. I thought: What if the thing they’re running from… is inside them?”
The film’s setting isn’t accidental. Geneva is a city of invisible power. Diplomats, hedge fund managers, and tax lawyers live side-by-side with asylum seekers and undocumented workers. The diamonds aren’t just jewels—they’re symbols of a system that turns human suffering into assets. And Nollaig? She’s the reckoning.
What Comes Next?
Filming kicks off in late 2023, with a target release in late 2024. Early test screenings are planned for festivals like Venice and Toronto. Critics who saw the script describe it as “Carrie meets The White Lotus with a dash of David Cronenberg.”
And that’s the beauty of it—it doesn’t just want to scare you. It wants to make you question who you’re rooting for. Is Nollaig a victim? A monster? Or just the first person in this family to stop pretending?
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes Diamond Shitter different from other body-horror films?
Unlike typical body-horror films that focus on grotesque transformation for shock value, Diamond Shitter ties physical change to systemic injustice. The horror isn’t just in Nollaig’s body—it’s in the silence of the wealthy who enabled her exploitation. The diamonds aren’t magic; they’re literal symbols of stolen wealth, and her body becomes the only space where truth can surface. It’s a political horror film disguised as a thriller.
Why is Geneva such an important setting?
Geneva isn’t just a backdrop—it’s a character. As a global hub for finance, diplomacy, and tax evasion, it’s home to some of the world’s most invisible power structures. The film uses its clean streets and quiet mansions to contrast the moral decay beneath. Real-life cases of offshore accounts hiding stolen assets from war zones mirror Nollaig’s stolen diamonds. The setting makes the metaphor feel terrifyingly real.
Who is Antonia Campbell-Hughes, and why does their background matter?
Campbell-Hughes is a non-binary filmmaker and former actor with deep roots in British and Irish cinema. Their debut feature, It Is in Us All, was praised for its psychological depth. Their lived experience living among Geneva’s expat elite gives Diamond Shitter an authenticity no outsider could replicate. This isn’t research—it’s memory. And that’s why the film feels so unsettlingly personal.
How does this film connect to real-world issues?
The film echoes real scandals involving Swiss banks hiding assets from victims of corruption, war crimes, and tax fraud. In 2021, the Pandora Papers revealed how Geneva-based firms helped elites conceal over $100 billion. Nollaig’s stolen diamonds aren’t fantasy—they’re the physical manifestation of those hidden fortunes. The film asks: What if the people who profit from these systems started to physically digest the consequences?
Will the film be available in theaters or only on streaming?
Diamond Shitter is being positioned as a theatrical release, with Beta Cinema targeting major European and North American arthouse circuits. It’s too thematically bold and visually distinctive for standard streaming algorithms. Think The Lighthouse or Titane—films designed to be experienced in a dark room, with a crowd. Theatrical release is part of the statement: this demands your full attention.
Is this a sequel to It Is in Us All?
No, it’s not a sequel—but it’s a spiritual cousin. Both films explore identity, repression, and the body as a site of trauma. Where It Is in Us All focused on toxic masculinity and isolation, Diamond Shitter turns the lens on inherited wealth and complicity. They’re two sides of the same coin: what happens when society’s hidden wounds finally break the skin.