“Just Me and My Cat” | Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby
Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on — for everyone around her, at least.
From writer, director, and star Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby marks the arrival of a bold and unforgettable new voice. The story of an academic recovering from a traumatic event, this achingly tender and exquisitely rendered feature debut is as funny, fresh, and emotionally resonant as it is fearless and assured.
Screening Monday, May 5, at 7:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, with Victor in attendance for a post-film Q&A, Sorry, Baby first premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award from the U.S. Dramatic Competition.
Produced by Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski, and Mark Ceryak of Pastel (Moonlight, Aftersun), the film will also close this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section before hitting U.S. theaters on June 27 from A24.
Ahead of Monday’s screening, Victor graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, their individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
During the pandemic, I was in a very dark Brooklyn apartment alone and spent my days (and often, nights) watching movies. It was really the only medicine that worked for my loneliness– I was escaping my reality and falling into other ones– In the Mood for Love, 45 Years, Secrets & Lies, Under the Skin, Kiki’s Delivery Service… Just the most romantic, sad, weird worlds. Each one felt like a cozy house I got to curl up into for a few hours. I realized, I want to try to do this. I want to write something that is as heart-forward as these.
Regarding directing, after I wrote Sorry, Baby, I sent it to Pastel, my producers. At first I thought I wanted someone else to direct it. But Barry said, “You’re a director. In the comedy videos you make, you’re making tons of choices, and that’s directing.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll remember that forever.” But I never thought I would direct a film. I was trying to write movies. Pastel said, “Go think about it.” So I did.
I spent the next few months making collages of every scene, full of stills from other films and photographs, and realized that, though I didn’t have technical knowledge yet, I had an understanding of what the film needed to look and feel like. So really, then, it was about building the skills to be able to communicate that vision to the other artists who were going to help make the film. My producers were so supportive. We spent a year meeting, and the script didn’t change over that time; we were figuring out what I needed in order to feel prepared to direct the film. We shot a couple of test scenes first with Mia Cioffi Henry, the wonderful director of photography. It was kind of all in service of me getting as clear on my vision as possible.
I shadowed my friend Jane Schoenbrun while they made I Saw The TV Glow a couple of summers ago, so I was seeing how sets run and absorbing it in a different way—I’d been on sets before as an actor, but this was completely different. So that was a really wonderful and helpful experience, and after that, I was like, “It’s time.”
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
I don’t want to give too much away, because this comes out before Chicago will see the movie, but… I wanted to make a film that focuses on the feelings that come after someone experiences a trauma. When you are trying to heal. The time when people look away and move through their own lives and you are still stuck, trying to make sense of what happened.
I really wanted to capture the experience of a person stuck inside this house, looking out their window, scared to go outside, but also somehow feeling trapped and desperate for connection. Someone who is waiting for the person they love to drive up to their house and rescue them from themself.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
I did a little watch party during prep on Sorry, Baby, with some of the Boston crew, of Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women. That movie is so beautiful and so simple and shot so thoughtfully. Visually, Certain Women was a major reference, and tonally too. I did this thing when I was trying to learn how people directed movies where I reverse shot-listed films.
What I learned from that is there’s a choice about how much access you’re giving to a character in every moment. The coverage in Certain Women is so simple. There’s so much restraint in how much access you get to the characters, and Kelly only goes close when it has to. There’s so much in her films that’s unsaid and just felt, and hopefully there’s a lot in this film, too, that’s unsaid and felt.
In the edit, I realized Sorry, Baby is super dialogue-heavy. There’s so much talking. Whereas in Certain Women, the things they say sort of have nothing to do with what they’re feeling, which is so true to life. That film is also about how lonely it can feel to be a woman. The structure of that film is so special and the way things are interconnected is so thoughtful. I could go on and on.
The film Burning had such an effect on me. It looks nothing like Sorry, Baby, but that film was so significant to my understanding of despair., Punch Drunk Love, Secret Sunshine, Margaret, The Handmaiden— I fell in love with filmmaking through these films.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
I wrote this script in a small, snowy town in mid-coast Maine. I was holed up there subletting my cousin’s house… It was just me and my cat, many cans of split pea soup and long walks in the cold. On my walks, I felt really inspired by the town– it’s quiet, and peaceful, incredibly beautiful, and also in moments eerily empty.
I set Sorry, Baby in Maine, because I was so inspired by it while I was writing. It felt like the perfect setting for a non-descript literature grad school — winter in New England can be romantic at times, and horror-ish at other times — It felt like the setting supported my tonal vision of the film; it could hold both joy and deep pain, connection and isolation — it allowed me to weave through the various tones I wanted to explore.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
My grandparents took me to see A Bug’s Life in theaters when I was four — three minutes in, I demanded we leave; the bugs were too big. So not that. To be completely honest, I remember seeing Moonlight in a basement theater at the Angelika, and I have this really visceral memory of the two boys, hands touching on the beach in the sand… My heart was pounding… That must have been 2016? It feels like yesterday.