Pride on Screen: F*CKTOYS + Q&A with Annapurna Sriram

Pride on Screen: F*CKTOYS feat. Q&A with filmmaker Annapurna Sriram
Welcome to Trashtown, U.S.A., rising like a pastel-hued industrial mirage out of the Louisiana swampland, where everyone has a kink and there is enough bad luck going around to keep a bevy of psychics employed. Sex worker AP (played by the intrepid writer/director/producer Annapurna Sriram) has learned she has been cursed. And it is a gnarly one. A fabulously bejeweled tarot reader (Big Freedia) delivers the prognosis and the cure: AP will need $1,000 and a baby lamb to complete the purification ritual, lest she be swallowed up by a black hole of bad juju. Thus, AP embarks on a quest for a few quick paydays and some livestock, accompanied by her perpetually pummeled non-binary twin flame Danni (an irrepressibly affable Sadie Scott). The film rides an antic energy from one beautiful mess of a scenario to the next as the two scrounge what cash and comfort they can from clients and friends — played by a spunky cast that includes Brandon Flynn, Damian Young and a knock-out performance from François Arnaud. With its cracked sense of humor and garish sublimity, this assured directorial debut from Sriram confidently coasts the cinematic wakes of John Waters and Gregg Araki, while charting its own sex-positive picaresque through the economic underbelly of the American South. Sriram’s refreshingly novel vision and facility both in front of and behind the camera inspired SXSW to honor her with the Special Jury Award for a Multi-Hyphenate after the film’s premiere. NOT RATED