{"id":584695,"date":"2026-05-15T02:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/584695\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T02:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:32:16","slug":"jane-schoenbrun-on-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/584695\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Schoenbrun on ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ \u2014 Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first film<\/a> to make some real noise at the 2026 Cannes<\/a> Film Festival, \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma<\/a>\u201d brought thrills, chills, and sapphic slasher vibes to the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Debussy on Wednesday night. But earlier that day, director Jane Schoenbrun<\/a> and their cast members Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson came by the American Pavilion<\/a> presented by IndieWire for a lively (and live!) chat about the new film.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you guys watch it, you tell me, but I think it\u2019s about as commercial as I can do, which is maybe not commercial,\u201d the \u201cI Saw the TV Glow\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019re All Going to the World\u2019s Fair\u201d director told the crowd. The film stars Hannah Einbinder as queer horror filmmaker Kris, who\u2019s been hired to reboot a popular (but problematic) \u201980s slasher film franchise, and she wants the original film\u2019s final girl, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), to star in it. But their meeting takes on a psychosexual twist as Billy starts to open up Kris\u2019 world in ways the 29-year-old director couldn\u2019t have anticipated. MUBI ultimately took on the film where other distributors passed.<\/p>\n

\"Fatherland\"<\/a> \"LOS<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond my wildest dreams, [\u2018I Saw the TV Glow\u2019] had this cultural impact, and it was crazy to be sort of greeted one after another with this kind of shrugging, shirking indifference,\u201d Schoenbrun, who is trans nonbinary and uses they\/them pronouns, said. \u201cA bunch of folks said, \u2018Slasher films aren\u2019t commercial.\u2019 I was like, \u2018That\u2019s how you know that\u2019s transphobia.\u2019 I see the fucking shit you guys are making three times a year, and they\u2019re slasher movies, you know? I don\u2019t think there was a conspiracy. \u2026 People choosing what movies get made have the taste of what they\u2019re excited to see, and the people who choose what movies get made\u2026 don\u2019t have the same gaze that interests me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JaneJane Schoenbrun, Hannah Einbinder, and Gillian Anderson at the American PavilionAmy Graves Photography<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really special film,\u201d Anderson added. \u201cI think the audience will get that from the second it starts. It\u2019s hilarious, and it\u2019s important, and it\u2019s profound.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the film is not only about queer sexual awakening, it\u2019s also an allegory for Schoenbrun\u2019s own evolving relationship to sex after coming out as trans in 2020 alongside the release of their Sundance breakout feature, \u201cWe\u2019re All Going to the World\u2019s Fair.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In terms of the film\u2019s \u201celevator pitch,\u201d Schoenbrun said, \u201cIt\u2019s a fucked-up elevator ride,\u201d laughing. \u201cThey\u2019re pressing that door open. They\u2019re pressing the one with the triangles pointing that way, they\u2019re like, \u2018Let me out of here.\u2019 It\u2019s funny when you\u2019re me, and you pitch a movie, you typically have to say something like, \u2018I have a very sad life story.\u2019 \u2026 My first two movies came out of a very specific moment in my life that was amazing in the sense that I was becoming myself, but if you\u2019ve seen those movies, you know they were pretty intense moments. The early stages of figuring out that you\u2019re trans and telling everyone in your life, and taking that step off the diving board and plunging into unknown waters. It was the same thing as getting on an SSRI, which is that you get all the bad side effects first.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this movie is about \u201ccoming into one\u2019s own body, one\u2019s own identity, one\u2019s own sexuality, for me, for the first time in my life at age 34 \u2026 the movie is about teenage things. The movie is about stuff that most people figure out about themselves when they\u2019re 15 or 16, because I didn\u2019t get a first puberty that made sense. What else can I tell you? Yeah, it\u2019s a movie about sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Einbinder, in her first leading film role and now amid the final season of \u201cHacks\u201d on HBO Max, said she \u201cwent to the Jane Schoenbrun Film Institute for Girls\u201d to watch films that set the tone for \u201cTeenage Sex and Death.\u201d Not just slasher movies, either. \u201cSome real pervert shit,\u201d Schoenbrun added.<\/p>\n

Anderson is well-acquainted with the macabre thanks to her beloved, long-running role on television\u2019s \u201cThe X-Files,\u201d but she\u2019s not necessarily a stereotypical horror consumer herself.<\/p>\n

\"‘Teenage\u2018Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma<\/a>\u2019Ryan Plummer<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a young teen, one of the first times I smoked weed, I was at somebody else\u2019s house, and they started watching \u2018Texas Chainsaw Massacre.\u2019 And I had one of the worst first trips of my entire life, and that really dictated my relationship with horror \u2014 and weed, as a matter of fact,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a big horror education, and it still triggers me a little bit. \u2026 Slasher and horror and anything \u2018Saw\u2019-like or real psychological thriller stuff, I can\u2019t go there. But I\u2019m happy to play somebody who embraces it and leans into that level of fear around it. \u2026 It\u2019s been a fun journey with my relationship with dark shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this is Schoenbrun\u2019s first time at Cannes as a director, they were previously at the festival in a different capacity, and in a totally different mindset, a decade ago. \u201cUm, I used to be a boy,\u201d they said, \u201cand I used to have a shitty job that I didn\u2019t like. I used to come to Cannes with that job, and I was at Cannes when I decided to quit my job. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m depressed at Cannes.\u2019 That was exactly 10 years ago, and now I\u2019m not depressed at Cannes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson, too, has never been at the festival for a movie before. \u201cBut when we wrapped the movie, I remember the last thing you said to everyone,\u201d Schoenbrun told Anderson. \u201cYou said, \u2018See everyone at Cannes.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid I say that?\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI made it happen. Yeah. That was me.\u201d<\/p>\n

MUBI releases \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma\u201d theatrically starting Friday, August 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first film to make some real noise at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, \u201cTeenage Sex and Death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[160823,96,10923,2332,59,2580,155900,155901,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-584695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-gb","tag-interviews","tag-jane-schoenbrun","tag-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}