Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma team takes to the stage at Cannes

"This was the most joyful experience of my life," says Jane Schoenbrun

by Amber Wilkinson

Jane Schoenbrun, Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder and Jack Haven onstage at Cannes
Jane Schoenbrun, Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder and Jack Haven onstage at Cannes Photo: Amber Wilkinson

The Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Film Festival opened last night with Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, co-starring Gillian Anderson and Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder.

The stars and director introduced the film at the Debussy Theatre in Cannes. Introducing the film, Schonebrun said: “There’s this song by Drake called Started From The Bottom, and it goes, ‘Started from the bottom, now we’re here.'”

The director, whose previous films We’re All Going To The World’s Fair and I Saw The TV Glow premièred at Sundance, said that being in Cannes was “unbelievable” and added: “I wanted to talk about joy, because this was the most joyful experience of my life making this movie. It was the first time that I directed a film where I truly felt free to be my whole self and I was just in love while making it. I was in love with the language of cinema, I was in love with the joy of getting to work with collaborators who care so deeply and can do amazing things that I found so beautiful that I could never imagine or do myself. And we just had it on this film.”

The film follows a twentysomething director (Einbinder) who heads to the snowy backwoods to try to persuade the reclusive final girl (Anderson) of the Camp Miasma slasher franchise to star in her reboot of the series. The result mixes a schlocky homage to the likes of Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street with a sexual awakening plotline and a fair bit more besides.

Before the film began, Anderson added: “This is my first time in Cannes with a film after a few hundred years of being in the industry and I’m glad to be here with this particular film and I’m so proud of it."

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