For her second feature “Death lover“Which premiered in Midnight section by 2025 Sundance Film Festival co-writer/director and star Grace Glowicki embraced not only her creepy side, but her smelly side as well.
Talk to Indiewire’s Christian Blauvelt at the Indiewire studio in Park Citypresented by Dropbox, Glowicki said of her character, “She’s a lonely gravedigger who smells so bad of corpses, no one will come near her. And she has a lot of emotions, so she’s very funny and angry and vulnerable and tender and all these kinds of different things. So she’s kind of this deviation of emotion and stink. ”
To hone in on this particular weirdness, Glowicki worked with his cast to find the characters best suited to each individual performer, all of whom outside of the writer/director/star play multiple parts. This includes Glowicki’s co-author, Ben Petrie.
“It was a really unique casting process,” Petrie said of uniting the team. “Grace brought Lea and Logan and I into the project, and we rehearsed for a while before we ever decided which characters to play. And Grace really allowed us all to have an organic approach to seeing what characters we were pushing against. And that made it really fun because it, it allowed us all to connect with the characters that we were most excited about and let every aspect of our inner freak fly accordingly. And it was also cool because it felt like, well, if you screwed up a show, you had 5 other characters you could have a shot at. “
Glowicki and Petrie’s co-star Lowen Morrow added: “We worked these scenes and developed them in the studio for months and months. And it was really wonderful, we all jumped in and out of each role so you could watch and then jump in yourself and then vice versa. So it was a really wonderful process and like, I’m transmasculine and I get to play this sad, badass guy, I can’t imagine another movie that someone would cast me like that. It was just so much fun to like – I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say metaphorically kick some doors. “
Glowicki’s Lo-Fi Frankenstein riff Has a lot of handy filmmaking tricks and budget-friendly production methods, all of which cast member Leah Doz felt added to their embrace of the film’s overall quirky tone, which she hopes viewers will embrace as well.
“There’s something really special about this project and about — I think what Grace creates it is — that allows you to go to extremes,” Doz told Indiewire. “And that’s what each of these characters do is like push extremes of ugliness, of vulgarity, of desperation. And for me as an actor, it’s fun to be able to make it something I would love for an audience to be like, ‘Oh my god, you can go that far or further? I don’t have to hold myself together so much. ‘”
Watch Indiewire’s full video interview with the “Dead Lover” team above.
“Dead Lover” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
Dropbox is proud to partner with Indiewire and the Sundance Film Festival. By 2025, 68% of feature films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival used Dropbox in their film production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, and secure all the files important to any project.
