Birth/Rebirth
Directed by Laura Moss
Hosted by Director, Co-Writer Laura Moss, Producer, Co-Writer Brendan O'Brien
Official selection
Sundance Film Festival 2023
Overlook Film Festival 2023
Sun Valley Film Festival 2023
Calgary Underground Film Festival 2023
Director
Laura Moss
Producer
Mali Elfman, David Grove Churchill Viste
Writer
Laura Moss, Brendan O’Brien
Cast
Judy Reyes, Marin Ireland, A.J. Lister, Breeda Wool
Cinematographer
Chananun Chotrungroj
contact
IFC Films / Shudder
“Drolly disturbing. A clever, provocative new take on a horror classic is born/reborn”– Jessica Kiang, VARIETY
“Takes risks, elevating its source material into another stratosphere that’s focused on solely female experiences and the desire for bodily autonomy”- Mary Beth McAndrews, DREAD CENTRAL
“An intriguingly feminine take on the modern Frankenstein myth, unearthing new truths about creation and highlighting the anguish of motherhood and the moral dilemmas that accompany it”– Jessica Scott, HORROR MOVIE BLOG
Rose (Marin Ireland, THE DARK AND THE WICKED) is a morgue technician with little patience for the living. Brilliant and obsessively driven, she also has a personal side-project that’s consumed much of her waking energies: The reversing of physical death. Celine (Judy Reyes, SCRUBS) is a hardworking maternity nurse who gives her all to patients shift after shift, the emotional intensity of her work only finding reprieve when she comes home to her effervescent six-year-old daughter, Lila (A.J. Lister). Fates take a horrific turn that smashes the lives of both women into each other, dropping them down a gruesome rabbit hole of desperate choices and ascending moral compromise that will shake you to your core. We’ll reveal no more.
An inspired quasi-reworking of Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN through a lens of motherhood and femininity, BIRTH/REBIRTH is a stunning feature debut by award-winning filmmaker Laura Moss (FRY DAY). It’s one of the most provocative and intellectually searing genre works in recent memory, full of disturbing ethical quagmires, pitch-black humour and a dozen med charts worth of trauma, evocative of Cronenberg Sr. by way of Lynne Ramsay and Stuart Gordon. Drawing on their past experiences working as an EMT, Moss has delivered a macabre film entrenched in the subculture of medicine that registers with uncommon authenticity. Its World Premiere at Sundance was disrupted by multiple audience members fainting. Enormously engrossing, with captivating performances from Reyes and Ireland, co-produced by Mali Elfman (NEXT EXIT) and bathed in a haunting score by Ariel Marx (SHIVA BABY), BIRTH/REBIRTH is further proof that genre storytelling’s vital signs have never been stronger. – Mitch Davis
Showings
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