Before making their feature directorial debut with Sundance entry Sorry, Baby — in which they also star and wrote the script — the longest film Eva Victor had ever directed came in with a running time of approximately 60 seconds.
Victor, who uses they/she pronouns, found success in the late 2010s via viral videos on Twitter, often lampooning trending news stories like the creation of a Straight Pride parade in Boston. They regularly racked up millions of views while simultaneously writing stories on the female-focused satire website The Reductress with headlines like, ” ‘I Want Children Someday,’ Says Man Who Will at Best Stand There Saying, ‘Push Babe.’ ” At the time, the Bay Area native was living in Brooklyn and looking to break into comedy, ideally with a staffed writing job “at a late night show to one of those guys,” as Victor puts it.
But when the pandemic lockdown happened, Victor didn’t mainline comedies, instead turning to deeply serious and personal films like Wong Kar-wai’s classic In the Mood for Love and Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 drama Margaret. In 2021, they retreated to a cabin in Maine, where they attempted their first screenplay. “I wanted to put myself through the exercise of something that doesn’t require me to receive immediate feedback,” says Victor.
When they were ready for feedback, Victor DMed one of their many social media followers, Oscar winner Barry Jenkins. “On a call, Barry was like, ‘Would you direct?’ I said, ‘Don’t know if I have that skill set. I didn’t go to film school.’ And he was like, ‘You’re already doing that in your videos.’ ” Victor shadowed director Jane Schoenbrun on the set of her A24 breakout I Saw the TV Glow before tackling their own 24-day shoot in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Sorry, Baby, which will screen in Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Competition section, follows a New England academic who stumbles through the healing process after a traumatic event. The festival is synonymous with breaking talent, from debut feature writer-directors (Coogler, Aronofsky, Holofcener) to up-and-coming actors (Harris Dickinson and Josh O’Connor were introduced to Hollywood via Sundance stand-outs), but rarer is an actor-director-writer getting established all at once with a first outing. This year, the festival’s dramatic competition line-up has a few triple threats, with Victor’s debut being one of the most anticipated.
“I’m completely obsessed with all of them,” says Victor of tackling multihyphenate territory from the jump. “So they’re going to have to pry everything from my cold, dead hands if they are going to take one away from me.”
This story appeared in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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