Shiva Baby
2018 · 8m · Canada
Directed by Emma Seligman
Genres: dark comedy, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
At a Jewish funeral reception with her parents, a college student runs into her sugar daddy — who is there with his wife and newborn baby — setting off a sustained social catastrophe of intersecting lies, expectations, and unspoken desires. Emma Seligman's NYU thesis film uses the claustrophobic shiva as a pressure cooker for generational, sexual, and class tensions.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Emma Seligman used a Jewish funeral reception to build a suspense machine — before anyone knew who she was — and the thesis film is more compressed and nastier than the feature it spawned.
Emma Seligman's NYU thesis that became the 2020 feature — the sustained anxiety-attack pacing of a Jewish mourning ritual as social pressure cooker is already fully formed here. A foundational object.
Seligman's NYU thesis that became the feature — turning a shiva into a sustained anxiety attack through pacing, sound design, and spatial compression. Rachel Sennott in the role that launched everything; this is the seed of a major voice.
Festivals
- SXSW 2018
- Toronto New Wave Festival 2018, Future of Film Award