If you’re following the conversation around genre films at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, you’ve certainly heard about “Leviticus.” Adrian Chiarella’s directorial debut, which tells the story of two teenage boys in rural Australia who fall in love but quickly find their small town using nefarious forces to keep them apart, has turned into one of the buzziest films in the Midnight program.
Chiarella and stars Mia Wasikowska, Stacy Clausen, and Joe Bird stopped by the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox, to discuss the film’s use of the horror genre to tell a queer love story. As the writer/director explained, the film was partially a tribute to the LGBTQ artists who have influenced horror from the very beginning.
“I always wanted to reclaim this genre,” Chiarella said. “This is a horror movie, and I always felt like horror films were really shaped by queer writers for queer audiences, and in a lot of ways we were reclaiming that space. This is a film about two boys who fall in love, and about the community that tries to erase that feeling that they have for each other. And the curse that they unintentionally unleash.”
Wasikowska also praised Chiarella’s vision, noting that she bought into the film immediately after reading the script.
“I just thought it was brilliant, the whole concept and the way that Adrian had chosen to tell this story,” she said. “It was written so assuredly, and I just thought it was completely brilliant. Some things you can just tell when you read them for the first time.”
Wasikowska falling in love with the script at first sight was no accident. Chiarella explained that his background working in film development taught him the importance of writing scripts that didn’t just look good on screen, but are also enjoyable on the page.
“I knew that the really great scripts that everybody talks about are the page turners,” he said. “I knew that I not only had to craft this into a good story with great characters, I also had to craft it in a way that it was presented in a way that everybody understood. Because it’s not just about selling it, it’s also about when you work with wonderful creative people like this, I think that if they connected with that first read, then their creative juices are flowing and they start bringing all kinds of great ideas to the table.”
Watch the full conversation with the “Leviticus” team above.
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