Dead Lover
West Coast Premiere with co-writer/actor Ben Petrie, actor Leah Doz, producer Yona Strauss, and production designer Becca Brooks Morrin in conversation with Kiva Reardon
Friday, April 4, 9:30 p.m. @ 2220 Arts + Archives (w/Q&A)
Saturday, April 5, 12:30 p.m., @ Vidiots MUBI Micro Cinema
Director: Grace Glowicki
Canada, 2025, 79 min, DCP
A lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses finally meets her dream man, but their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.
A rising talent of Canadian indie cinema, Grace Glowicki — co-writer, director, producer, and star of her sophomore feature — fashions this defiantly oddball and inspired, gorgeously lensed take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a handcrafted lo-fi wonder that plays like a Monty Python sketch but looks like a Raúl Ruiz film. A lonely gravedigger (Glowicki) falls head-over-heels in love with an aristocrat (co-writer Ben Petrie), whose untimely death leads to a series of increasingly debauched experiments in reanimation. Shot on luminous 16mm by Rhayne Vermette, Dead Lover’s combination of physical humor, glowingly artificial set design, and unapologetically kinky situations make it a living, breathing work of high camp.
Official Selection: 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival
Cast: Grace Glowicki, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow, Ben Petrie
Producers: Yona Strauss, Ben Petrie, Grace Glowicki
Writers: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie