When the supply exceeded demand at the “Fucktoys” table, Anapurna Sriram shifted their role on Fantasy From movie star to audience control. The first filmmaker from Nashville is a trained Dominatrix that makes quadruple in his dazzling debut. Sriram leads, writes, produces and stars in “fucktoys”, the epic misunderstanding of a sweetheart Sex workers Lives with a curse in candy colored trashtown, USA.
“We bring merch with us everywhere, but when you travel, the weight contribution means that you can only pack so much,” Sriram told IndieWire in Montreal. “Last night’s show was over 600 people, and I had no idea we would sell out. Then I was down to my last poster.”
Illustrated by Canadian artist Suspiria Vilchez, the “Fucktoys” poster is perfectly 60’s pastiche with just a pinch of modern perversion. A horny riff on “Roman Holiday”, the promotional image shows leading lady “AP” (Sriram) that extends over an old blue scooter, licks a heart -shaped club and wears clear platform halves with white baby dolls.
“Our regular card reader doesn’t work outside the United States, so we had to use cash or another app,” she explained. “This poor girl is trying to download Paypal on her phone, but while she waits there everyone else is asking:“ Can I buy the poster? “I say,” No, I think this girl will buy it. “But then this other girl goes: ‘Well I have cash, and I pay more For that! ‘She started a real bid war. “
Sriram held his word and sold the last poster to the first girl. She is kind and does not like to inspire competition between fans, but the filmmaker will not settle when she finally sells “Fucktoys.” Braiding regrettable and desirable to an evil funny riding harvest, the actress wrote his film’s outrageous script in 2017. The story draws from Sriram’s real experiences as part of Kink Community, And the new cult hite made more than $ 1,000 that only sells the item in a single suitcase.
Fantasia is the 14th film Festival to program srirams sex plloity girl after their buzzy world premiere on SXSW in MarchWhere she won the Special Jury Award for a multi -hyphenated, especially created for this movie. Executive producer Tim Petryni told IndieWire that several companies have expressed interest in distributing “fucktoys”, but that Sriram does not yet have fat an offer she wanted to take.
“I would never let a client talk down my interest rate,” she said. “Why would I let a distributor?”
Sriram is among the more memorable artists who creep the indie movie circle this summer, and pleasing horny is the key to appreciating her work as an eventful and contagious brand. The director carried her character’s shoes to Fantasy Shows, which was packed with as many slicing of French-Canadian men as it was non-binary Babes and sweet queer women.
The actress was lying on the red carpet in Quebec and unintentionally manufactured photographer Charles-Antoine Marcotte Blush when she got on her knees to pose.
“You can never expect these moments to happen,” Marcotte wrote to IndieWire in a translated text message. “We had extra time, and Annapurna gave her everything!”
Sriram did not know what a “genre” movie was before she began to bring “Fucktoys” to events like Fantasia Fest. More often associated with science fiction, fantasy or horror, that kind of very elegant filmmaking expands its definition rapidly. The overwhelming success for Sriram’s personal performances, which regularly sells out, can be enough to start a mini-theatrical resuscitation for SMUT.
“This movie has taken eight years, not to mention money, blood, sweat and tears,” said Sriram, who in the first scene also directed to piss on a man. “The title” Fucktoys “started as a joke, and when I tried to finance the movie I got so many notes that were just censorship Notes, everyone says to me: “You can’t do this!” Or “You can’t do it!”
She added, “There is something to say to regain that experience and point out what really happens there. You try to censor me as an artist because you are afraid of me as a woman, and then you do not take me seriously as a director because you do not respect me as a woman. They want both roads.”
Sriram is a theater child who spent much of his actress’s career outside Broadway and shows up at West End. As a half -white, semi -indiscribe, she was repeatedly typecast in removing roles but longed to play “a liberated sex pot that was brown.”
“I didn’t know I was different until I became an actor,” she said. “Half of my family is from New England, but I also have the Tennessee roots, and I have no strong connection to my father’s land in any way. It was when I became an actor that I suddenly met with throwing directors who wanted to put me in a headscarf. They would say:” You are the doctor. “‘You are the nurse.’ “You are the girl whose parents want her to get an arranged marriage.” But it has never been me.
Of course, Sriram was not raised on the cheap mental readings and the scatological game you see in “Fucktoys” either. Instead, the halted greedy POV comes from her liberation in young adulthood and honors centuries by women who have changed the world by simply doing what they want.
Sriram met his BDSM teacher and possible “fuckto’s” intimacy coordinator, Olivia Troy, while researching for another film role in New York. That project fell apart and Sriram lives in Los Angeles now. The collaborators remain friends – and besides, you can’t Löja How to tie someone. Gleeuly talks about a lubrication chop that she learned from Troy (if you do not have your professional BDSM equipment you can use … the plastic bag from a hotel waste compartment?), Sriram does not want to.
“It felt like I had found this secret world, or maybe a double life, where I had this super dynamic and full sexual experience that really lets me find myself, but the industry couldn’t see or throw me that way,” she said. “Shame is the most useless feeling. It is this artificial thing that was designed to oppress women and transgender people, really intended to make them save God. But I have met so many straight men with very specific BDSM-Kinks and so much shame that they wear, and it is deeply boring for all
of us to feel that way. Imagine how happy we could be if we stopped giving a fan what everyone else did and had fun. ”
The evening after the “fucktoys” show in Montreal, on McKibbins Irish PUB (Fantasia’s favorite water hole), Sriram convinced a publicist that role -playing “filmmakers and financiers” with her at the table. Later that night, when a shy young woman approached Sriram to say she was beautiful, director stopped her and said, “Ok, but you is the most beautiful woman in this bar! “
“When you are around a lot of hot, powerful, fun, smart, sexy girls and you handle these dirty men together, you realize it’s your fucking people,” Sriram said. “I’m a big fan of catcalling girls because I’m a big fan of girls. I’m watching the women who come to see my movie, and I’m in awe. I’m just a big fan of you, and I think we have an audience who wants to see this movie in theaters.”
Introduction of “Fucktoys” with an open invitation for Fantasia to “get horny”, Sriram is a natural fit for Midnight movie space. The film’s aesthetics are part of a bubble gum that she imagined herself as a young queer woman and shares the inner world with an audience both reinforces and softens the fantasy -fate she did.
“Think of Trashtown like a goodwill in the south or your grandmother’s house,” Sriram said, describing a kind of stained feminin. “That’s all the kitschy shit she used to collect, plus plastic toys that she left sitting in the sun, plus some of the” umbrellas of Cherbourg “feeling. It’s monochromatic color pops and rewriting the story a bit. What is it if it is the 60s, but I’m Brigite Bardot?”
Sriram did not plan to direct or start in his debut function at first, but a limited budget – and the promise of a carefree filmmaker who could not make himself uncomfortable with extreme asks – made “fucktoys” completely her. Consistent crowds and strong mouth-to-mouth have kept Sriram traveling for views for months. In the Czech Republic, she met a group of high school girls who carved out to watch her movie after 3 am
“I was,“ Where do your parents think you are? “And they are like,” Oh, we said we had a sleep, “Sriram said.” I was immediately like, ‘go to the film school. Please. Please. Go to the film school. We need more female filmmakers. “”
With the impact that flows down the American East Coast and deep into the south, Sriram is compared to Legendary John Waters Often. The Pope of Junk met the Ingenue film creator on a “Fucktoys” show in Provincetown earlier this year. It is another proof of her reach and a reason to hope that the right company (or the person) will support Sriram’s flowering society at this critical time for women.
“First I cried. Then I tried to talk to him about” Polyester. “Then I think I disappeared,” Sriram said. “I remember giving him a poster.”
Back at Fantasia Fest, several distributors to IndieWire told them that they were surprised “fucktoys” had not found a home yet, but they also said that Sriram met an upward fight because of the title – partly inspired by the term “Fuckboy.” Sriram sees the power to hold the name as a “controversial conversation piece”, and it did not prevent her from getting a special jury mention in the new meat competition for the best first feature of Fantasia.
Still, Sriram knows more than most what it is like to be misjudged, and she is determined to get her playfully subversive film to the “real” who want it. For “Fucktoys”, the festival process has been a lot like dating. At Fantasia, the unexpected romantic film Sriram’s entire auditorium made it feel like a church. The filmmaker does not hear Distro Wedding Bells yet, but she believes that true love is out there.
“As a woman, when you go out to the world, everyone will project something on you,” she said. “I want women to feel empowered. It’s my only agenda. I’m a girl’s girl who wants women to feel beautiful, safe and happy, because we are so vulnerable to so many abuses right now. I lacked confidence for so long and I was loaded with all this internalized misogy. But you make yourself free when you stop self -pollizing.
“You release yourself when you stop asking,” may I dress like that? “” Should I talk like that? “” Should I sexualize myself as a serious director like that? “, She said.” Instead, “Fuck you. This is my life forever.” And we choose to protect each other – because we are hot girls, and Trash is all we have. “
“Fucktoys” was last shown at Fantasia Fest 2025. Here you can see it in August:
- Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival – Providence, Ri
- Thursday, August 7 at 15:15 AM in Providence Showcase Cinema
- Atlanta Underground Film Festival – Atlanta, GA
- Saturday August 9th at 18:30 et in Limelight Theater
- Popcorn Fritts Film Festival – Hollywood, FL
- Thursday, August 14 at 21 o’clock at Cinema Paradiso
- Reel Queer Film Festival – Little Rock, ar
- Friday August 22 at 19 o’clock in Ron Robinson Theater
- Baton Rouge Underground Film Festival – Baton Rouge, LA
- Saturday August 23 at. 19:30 CT in the Manship Theater
- Sidewalk Film Festival – Birmingham, Al
- Saturday 23 August at 21:45 CT in Lyric Theater
