AZ: The subject matter of the film is so multi layered. Your protagonist states right at the start that she doesn’t classify herself as a narcissist and we do get some clues as to the reasons for her need for attention. Is she just suffering from a general lack of love?
KB: There isn’t a big point of trauma in that story. I didn’t want to make a movie like that, I didn’t want to point back in history to a specific event in childhood that made her different. She is just being petty and self-centred. Yes, she has divorced parents but that’s what half of the population has – it’s not very special and shouldn’t be an enabler for her behaviour. But I do think that anyone can be born with a mind that is pushing you towards negative impulses. It’s unlucky to lack a filter. I built this character around things that I recognise in myself and in people around me and in our culture. I have a filter that stops me from reacting towards negative impulses and I was interested to see, through fiction, what if there was a character who didn’t have brakes. The competitiveness and the pettiness, the extreme need to be the main character amongst her peers. I think there’s a lot of pressure and many incentives that motivate her. One thing is her psychological construction, placed in a culture and society that rewards marginalisation or trauma or victim narratives, which is good in itself but in the wrong hands it becomes gamified. It becomes a competition, an opportunity. The satire of the movie is looking at someone who is opportunistically playing the game of inclusivity and well-intended platforming of victims.

AZ: It’s interesting to see how society reacts in your film. She is rewarded as a victim as long as she’s still attractive. But once the ugliness takes over, people lose interest.
KB: Exactly, theres a limit to inclusivity. In fashion there’s a limit to how far they can go before it stops working to their benefit. It’s the hypocrisy of the opportunistic, capitalistic motivation for inclusivity. They are not doing charity, they are not willing to spend or lose money to support others, it’s purely piggybacking some activism that can be good for their brand. That’s the motivation. There’s no good heartedness or sacrifice. It’s just about co-opting and using these people to improve their income. That’s what I wanted to sort of poke fun at. Because in our culture, from journalism to the fashion industry, this tendency of when is it helping and when is it using…the borders are blurred and vague. I wanted to highlight that. There’s a contradiction that lends itself to comedy.

AZ: The use of jump cut editing, especially during her dream sequences, plays an important part in the movie. Is this something you planned before shooting?
KB: The idea was that I was going to have an editor on this movie but I also really wanted to shoot on 35mm film, which is very costly so we had to look at where to cut cost. I volunteered to edit the movie for free, that was the only way we could shoot on film. This was my first time editing a feature. I haven’t gone to any school or anything like that, it’s purely intuitive. It feels melodic to me, like music. There is an intuitive sense of rhythm. It’s hard to talk about the editing style because it is purely intuitive.

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