Ben Petrie
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“I Could See Myself So Clearly in Her Fear”: Writer/Director Ben Petrie on His Rotterdam-Premiering, Dog-Loving Relationship Comedy, The Heirloom
“A squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship” is how I described Ben Petrie’s fifth short film Her Friend Adam when profiling the Canadian writer-director-actor for Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list. That film starred Petrie and real-life partner Grace Glowicki as a couple whose relationship is unexpectedly destabilized when he spies a suggestive text message on her phone. He admitted at the time that the short was inspired by a “private lash of jealousy” he experienced in a similar moment with Glowicki, and our profile concluded with him working on a screenplay for this forthcoming first feature. You […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2024 -
“Persistent Paranoia, Anxiety and Fear Does Something to Your Body…”: Five Questions for Tito Writer/Director Grace Glowicki
One of the great independent film discoveries of SXSW 2019 is a picture that is also one of the boldest artistic statements of year, Grace Glowicki’s Tito. The Canadian actor and director is known to Filmmaker readers as the female lead of 2016 25 New Face Ben Petrie’s Her Friend Adam, which I dubbed in these pages “a squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship.” Glowicki’s character’s response to her partner’s icky jealousy, I wrote, is one of “unrivaled power and blistering sexual humiliation, capped off by a loudly feigned orgasm that will erase in viewers any memory of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2019 -
Ben Petrie
As a title, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious has already been taken, by Sigmund Freud, or else, one might guess, Ben Petrie could have considered it for his short film Her Friend Adam. A squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship, the 17-minute picture reworks the dreaded territory of the millennial relationship comedy to exhausting and exhilarating ends. (Out of Sundance, in fact, Filmmaker’s Erik Luers suggested his own alternate title: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: The Early Years.”) In Her Friend Adam, Petrie and real-life girlfriend Grace Glowicki are hipster couple Robert and Liv, whose entirely […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 25, 2016 -
Eight Recommended Short Films at Sundance 2016
Features premiering at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival tend to receive the most media attention and press coverage, but there are a number of short works making their debut this week that deserve equal or greater consumer attention. Documentary filmmakers trying their hand at narrative work, established producers getting behind the lens for the first time: many of the shorts in this year’s Sundance lineup feature filmmakers stepping outside of their comfort zone to expand their careers and diversify their storytelling output. The short form is an ideal place to try new things, of course, and it’s encouraging to see filmmakers of […]
by Erik Luers on Jan 21, 2016
