Directed by Annapurna Sriram
U.S. | 2025 | Fiction | 106 min | English
Sponsored by Erika Senft Miller and John Miller
Thursday, October 23 | 9:30 PM | FH
Annapurna Sriram grew up in Nashville but her Vermont connections run deep. She was born in Burlington and spent much of her childhood here. Sriram and some key crew members even hunkered down in Burlington during the pandemic and hammered out much of the pre-production for Fucktoys right here. So Fucktoys may take place in the Deep South, in the uncouth underbelly of the fictional Trashtown—all humid industrial landscapes and pastel cotton candy skies—but a piece of its heart lives in the Green Mountain State. In this reimagining of the Fool's journey from the Major Arcana of the Tarot, Sriram plays AP, a sex-worker who finds out she is hexed. She and bruiser BFF Danni set out to cleanse her aura and hustle some quick cash along the way. Sriram valiantly throws herself into the middle of this crackling 16mm fever dream and looks fabulous in all her hats. Both in front of and behind the camera, she’s a winning presence and a game comedienne, and she makes the film kinetic and sticky. Fucktoys has earned instant comparisons to John Waters, and this candy-coated melodrama also recalls early Pedro Almodóvar, plus it owes a hell of a lot to the vibrant sauciness of Anna Biller. But this is Sriram’s show through and through; her personality jumps off the screen, and everything is of a piece with her glossy-seedy vision. From the moment Big Freedia shows up in the opening scene, deep in the bowels of the bayou, it’s clear that Fucktoys is a cult classic in the making. ~OO