Bianca Poletti
Bianca Poletti
L.A.-based director Bianca Poletti has been making shorts steadily since 2019. Each finds her working with a different genre, style or tone: an experimental film about a teenage girl losing her virginity (I Am Whole, 2019); an offbeat comedy/drama about poly dating (Radical Honesty, 2022); a very funny satire about no-budget filmmaking (Just Kidding: Ultra Low, 2024); and, most recently, the SXSW-premiering Video Barn (2025), an ’80s-feeling (although present day) horror short reminiscent of Wes Craven, David Cronenberg and David Lynch. Wittily starting with a mini-dissertation on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Barn is about two teenage girls working in a video rental store, one of whom disappears, and the ominous VHS tape that may hold a clue. But Poletti doesn’t see this stylistic flexibility as anything unusual. “I’m just into humans,” she says, “and I’m really not fascinated or obsessed with one type of story. I like to explore everything, but a common thread I really love is a retro work blended into the modern day. And I really love coming-of-age stories. Even though it’s technically genre, for me Video Barn is more about the friendship between the girls and a coming-of-age moment in this small Stephen King town, which one of them is ready to leave.”
There’s more work on her CV than what’s listed above—shorts and music videos but also commercial work, which is how Poletti supports herself. Born of Argentinian parents, she grew up in San Diego where, as a kid, she’d write, direct and star in homemade plays. Moving to Seattle, she worked in styling and fashion photography. She made her first short, Fertile, “on a whim” for $2,000 during COVID and is now signed to commercials rep Biscuit Filmworks, working “nonstop, multiple times a month for an entire year. I’m signed too for commercials in France, Germany, Italy and the UK, which has been really amazing for my film [work] because I’ve had the luxury of working big-budget projects with some really big DPs and production designers.”
About her commercial work, Poletti says, “The ones I say ‘yes’ to are the ones that have some kind of narrative element to them,” citing brands like Coca-Cola, World Cup, Meta, Sephora, Smartwater, Logitech and EURO. Whenever she does a short film, it becomes part of the portfolio her reps will submit to agencies, and it’s the narrative work that often attracts brands. But when it comes to her own shorts, does she sometimes chafe at the budgetary restrictions, given that her brand work is so much more luxurious from a production point of view? “Honestly, I kind of thrive and really like the feeling. When you don’t have too many things, you’re forced to figure out how to do it, and you’re just there because you want to create something special.” For example, when the locations work for Video Barn was too extensive for the budget, the whole shoot, including a fantasy “void world” sequence, collapsed into the video store location, which was itself not a build but a redressed record store.
Authentically eerie, Video Barn is the recent work that has done the most for Poletti in the film space. “Out of SXSW, a lot of people saw it, and I’ve had great meetings nonstop with companies like Sony and Scott Free about a feature version, which I’m writing now.” She’s also working on a feature she says will “be closer in tone to Blue Valentine and George & Tammy.”
While she waits for those feature projects to come together, though, she’s still making shorts. “I try to make one a year,” she says—the latest being Yuki, which she describes as “a coming-of-age thing” (naturally!) “that’s a blend between Lady Bird and Aftersun, with a bit of a weird twist to it.” Citing Paul Thomas Anderson as an inspiration because of the breadth of his filmography, she has no plans to constrict her creative range so as to limit herself to one type of filmmaking and doesn’t think anyone else should either: “I think that’s super important, for all filmmakers, unless they’re obsessed with one genre, to explore every story—to try to make something unique that isn’t the same world every time. At least, that’s what works for me.”—Scott Macaulay/Image: self
