“A good electric chair” is how Jane Schoenbrun describes their first Cannes Film Festival premiere.
“I really felt like my body was in a state of convulsion,” says Schoenbrun.
The day after the premiere of “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” a bold, bloody queer slasher film starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, Schoenbrun and their co-stars were still buzzing from the ecstatic response. The movie, one of the most prominent American films in Cannes this year, gave the festival a gonzo jolt.
For Schoenbrun, the leading trans filmmaker of their generation, the film extends their intensely personal exploration of gender and the movies that defined their youth. But their first two films — 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow” and 2021’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” — were the raw, burning products of Schoenbrun’s transition. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” drawn from Schoenbrun’s happy, exploratory post-transition life, isn’t that.
It’s about desire and sex. It’s a biting satire of reboot-mad Hollywood. It’s a schlocky and subversive slasher movie homage. It’s a lot of fun, and quite tender, even when bodies are blood-spurting geysers.
“This is the first movie that feels like it represents the fullness of who I am,” Schoenbrun says.
But Wednesday’s moment of triumph in Cannes was hard-won. Ten years ago, Schoenbrun, now 39, was working in the film industry in a job they hated.
“The first time I came here, I just felt like, ‘Oh my, god. I can’t believe I’m in Cannes.’ I went to, like, ‘The Lobster,’ at the Palais in my boy tux. I was like: ‘This is it. I’ve done it,'” says Schoenbrun. “Then the next year I came back and I was so depressed. I decided to quit my job. If I’m depressed at Cannes, there’s something that needs to change. I know I want to be here but I need a better reason to be here.”
They pause and then smile. “I just can’t believe that it ended up working out.”
Einbinder (“Hacks”) plays Kris, an indie filmmaker hired to direct a reboot of “Camp Miasma,” a decades-spanning slasher series. Studio executives are looking for a fresh origin story. For Kris, it’s a dream job. Since seeing the first movie on VHS as an 8-year-old, she’s been obsessed with the movies.
While visiting the iconic camp of the film, she encounters Billy Presley (Anderson), the Final Girl from the first movie. Their unfolding relationship opens up both inspiration for the movie Kris (but not executives) wants to make, as well as her own sexual anxieties.
“I wanted to be part of a thing that I thought would be important to exist in the world,” says Anderson. “This film is really important and I think it’s going to rectify a lot of things.”
The film industry satire of “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” has some real-world echoes. Even though “TV Glow,” released by A24, was an indie event, Schoenbrun’s third film was turned down everywhere but Mubi, which releases it Aug. 7.
“It was kind of shocking to me that it was just pass after pass after pass,” Schoenbrun says. “You don’t know, in the way you never know as a trans person. You’re like: ‘Maybe there’s something about my otherness that you’re not into.’ Hollywood can feel like a mafia. I think it was a f—ing shame.”
For Schoenbrun, the kind of cultural assumptions about what’s mainstream can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Your movie is not commercial because they think it’s not commercial,” they say, citing the white men who dominate Hollywood executive ranks. “We’re in such a bled-dry moment. You can really feel it with the s— that’s coming out.”
Einbinder, starring in her first film, was drawn to the deeply felt nature of Schoenbrun’s work.
“There is fiction around it, but Jane is a personal filmmaker and these movies are allegorical to their experience in many ways,” she says. “That affected me.”
Schoenbrun was determined to make it, regardless. “How much did they make the original ‘Friday the 13th’ for?” they asked. Remaining resolute was the key, just as it was for Schoenbrun in writing a soon-to-be-released 600-page fantasy novel — just as it was in changing their fate in Cannes 10 years ago.
“My movies are obsessed with this idea of what it takes to make something real,” says Schoenbrun. “I have a tattoo to make sure I wrote my book that says ‘Make it real.’ This is very much an ideology: We can remake ourselves and the world around us.”
