‘F—toys’ Multi-Hyphenate Annapurna Sriram Talks Non-Binary Co-Star’s Passport Scare & “Rebellious Nature” Of Her SXSW Winner

deadline.com:

Writer, director and actress Annapurna Sriram‘s celluloid fever dream has won over audiences at SXSW. With her feature directorial debut Fucktoys, which won the fest’s Special Jury Award for a Multi-Hyphenate, Sriram told Deadline she hopes to make right-wing audiences “accidentally fall in love” with her queer, diverse cast of characters.

Sriram stars in her 16mm debut as AP, a fun-loving dominatrix who learns from a tarot reader (Big Freedia) that she’s been cursed, and the only way to lift the curse is to come up with $1,000 and sacrifice a baby lamb.

Reuniting with her ex Danni (Sadie Scott), the pair hops around Trashtown to earn the fee while encountering some peculiar characters along the way. “I sort of wrote the script out of feeling like I just want to be in a John Waters movie or a Gregg Araki movie or a Jim Jarmusch movie,” said Sriram. “That’s all I really want, and so I might actually just have to cast myself in that light because I don’t think anyone is going to see me how I see myself.” After feeling pigeonholed as an actress of color, Sriram assembled a queer cast that includes Freedia, Scott, Brandon Flynn and Francois Arnaud.

The first-time director recalled Scott, who is non-binary, telling her that the role was “the first time I got to actually be myself in a character.” Amid the Trump administration’s mission against trans rights, Scott found that their gender marker was reverted to female on their passport. “When we made the movie, it was in Trump’s America, and now I’m feeling so much more like, I had no idea how important this would be,” added Sriram. “I didn’t realize how much we’d regressed culturally and now I just feel like, wow, people get to watch them in this film as a trans person, and