When provide exceeded demand on the “Fucktoys” merch desk, Annapurna Sriram shifted her function at Fantasia Fest from film star to crowd management. The primary-time filmmaker from Nashville is a educated dominatrix who does quadruple-duty in her dazzling characteristic debut. Sriram directs, writes, produces, and stars in “Fucktoys,” the epic misadventure of a sweetheart intercourse employee dwelling with a curse in candy-colored Trashtown, USA.
“We carry merch with us in every single place, however once you journey, the burden allowance means you may solely pack a lot,” Sriram advised IndieWire in Montreal. “Final night time’s screening was over 600 individuals, and I had no thought we might promote out. Then, I used to be all the way down to my final poster.”
Illustrated by Canadian artist Suspiria Vilchez, the “Fucktoys” poster is ideal ‘60s pastiche with only a pinch of recent perversion. A attractive riff on “Roman Vacation,” the promo picture exhibits main woman “AP” (Sriram) straddling an outdated blue scooter, licking a heart-shaped lollipop, and carrying clear platform heels with white babydoll socks.
“Our normal card reader doesn’t work exterior the U.S., so we had to make use of money or a unique app,” she defined. “This poor lady is making an attempt to obtain PayPal on her telephone, however whereas she’s ready there, everybody else begins to ask, ‘Can I purchase the poster?’ I say, ‘No, I believe this lady goes to purchase it.’ However then, this different lady goes, ‘Nicely, I’ve money, and I’ll pay extra for it!’ She began an actual bidding warfare.”
Sriram stored her phrase and offered the final poster to the primary lady. She’s type and doesn’t wish to encourage competitors between followers, however the filmmaker received’t be settling when she lastly sells “Fucktoys.” Braiding deplorable and fascinating right into a viciously enjoyable driving crop, the actress wrote her film’s outrageous script in 2017. The story attracts from Sriram’s actual experiences being a part of the kink neighborhood, and the rising cult hit made greater than $1,000 simply promoting the merch in a single suitcase.
Fantasia is the 14th movie competition to program Sriram’s sexploitation flick after its buzzy world premiere at SXSW in March, the place she received the Particular Jury Award for a Multi-Hyphenate, particularly created for this movie. Govt producer Tim Petryni advised IndieWire that a number of corporations have expressed curiosity in distributing “Fucktoys,” however that Sriram has but to discipline a suggestion she needed to take.
“I might by no means let a shopper discuss down my fee,” she mentioned. “Why would I let a distributor?”
Sriram is among the many extra memorable artists crawling the indie movie circuit this summer season, and joyful horniness is essential to appreciating her work as an event-worthy and infectious model. The director wore her character’s footwear to the Fantasia displaying, which was filled with as many drooling French-Canadian males because it was nonbinary babes and cute queer ladies.
The actress lay down on the pink carpet in Quebec and inadvertently made photographer Charles-Antoine Marcotte blush when she acquired on her knees to pose.
“You might by no means anticipate these moments to occur,” Marcotte wrote to IndieWire in a translated textual content message. “We had further time, and Annapurna gave it her every thing!”
Sriram didn’t know what a “style” film was earlier than she began bringing “Fucktoys” to occasions like Fantasia Fest. Extra usually related to science fiction, fantasy, or horror, that sort of extremely trendy filmmaking is increasing its definition quickly. The overwhelming success of Sriram’s in-person appearances, which usually promote out, could be sufficient to kick off a mini theatrical resurgence for smut.
“This movie has taken eight years, to not point out cash, blood, sweat, and tears,” mentioned Sriram, who within the first scene additionally directed herself pretending to piss on a person. “The title ‘Fucktoys’ began off as a joke, and once I was making an attempt to finance the movie, I obtained so many notes that had been simply censorship notes, all telling me, ‘You may’t do that!’ or ‘You may’t do this!’”
She added, “There’s one thing to be mentioned for reclaiming that have and declaring what’s actually occurring there. You’re making an attempt to censor me as an artist since you’re afraid of me as a lady, and you then’re not taking me critically as a director since you don’t respect me as a lady. They need it each methods.”
Sriram is a theater child who spent a lot of her performing profession off-Broadway and showing on the West Finish. As a half-white, half-Indian performer, she was repeatedly typecast in disempowering roles however yearned to play “a liberated intercourse pot who was brown.”
“I didn’t know I used to be totally different till I grew to become an actor,” she mentioned. “Half of my household is from New England, however I even have these Tennessee roots, and I don’t have a powerful reference to my dad’s nation by any means. It was once I grew to become an actor that I used to be immediately confronted with casting administrators who needed to place me in a headband. They’d say, ‘You’re the physician.’ ‘You’re the nurse.’ ‘You’re the lady whose mother and father need her to get an organized marriage.’ However that has by no means ever been me.”
After all, Sriram wasn’t raised on a budget psychic readings and scatological play you see in “Fucktoys” both. As an alternative, that grimy-girly POV comes from her liberation in younger maturity, honoring centuries of ladies who’ve modified the world by merely doing what they need.
Sriram met her BDSM trainer and eventual “Fucktoys” intimacy coordinator, Olivia Troy, whereas researching for a unique film function in New York. That undertaking fell aside, and Sriram lives in Los Angeles now. The collaborators stay pals — and moreover, you may’t unlearn tips on how to fist somebody. Gleefully recounting a lubrication hack she discovered from Troy (when you don’t have your skilled BDSM gear, you need to use… the plastic bag from a lodge waste bin?), Sriram wouldn’t need to.
“It felt like I had discovered this secret world, or perhaps a double life, the place I used to be having this tremendous dynamic and full sexual expertise that was actually letting me discover myself, however the trade couldn’t see or solid me that approach,” she mentioned. “Disgrace is probably the most ineffective feeling. It’s this man-made factor that was designed to oppress ladies and trans individuals, actually supposed to make them worry God. However I’ve met so many straight males with very particular BDSM kinks and a lot disgrace that they’re carrying, and it’s deeply unhappy for all
of us to really feel that approach. Assume how joyful we may very well be if we stopped giving a fuck what all people else was doing and had enjoyable.”
The night time after the “Fucktoys” screening in Montreal, at McKibbin’s Irish Pub (Fantasia’s favourite watering gap), Sriram satisfied a publicist to role-play “filmmaker and financier” together with her on the desk. Later that night time, when a shy younger girl approached Sriram to say she was fairly, the director stopped her and mentioned, “OK, however you are probably the most lovely girl on this bar!”
“While you’re round a number of sizzling, highly effective, humorous, good, horny women, and also you cope with these shitty males collectively, you understand these are your fucking individuals,” Sriram mentioned. “I’m an enormous fan of catcalling women as a result of I’m an enormous fan of ladies. I have a look at the ladies who come to see my film, and I’m in awe. I’m simply an enormous fan of you, and I consider that we have now an viewers that desires to go see this movie in theaters.”
Introducing “Fucktoys” with an open invitation for Fantasia to “get attractive,” Sriram is a pure match for the midnight film area. The movie’s aesthetic is a part of a bubblegum heritage she imagined for herself as a younger queer girl, and sharing that internal world with an viewers each amplifies and softens the fantasy wasteland she made.
“Consider Trashtown like a goodwill within the south, or your grandma’s home,” Sriram mentioned, describing a type of frayed femininity. “It’s all of the kitschy shit that she used to gather, plus the plastic toys she left sitting out within the solar, plus a bit of of that ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ really feel. It’s monochromatic pops of coloration and rewriting historical past a bit of bit. What if it’s the ’60s, however I’m Brigitte Bardot?”
Sriram didn’t plan to direct or star in her debut characteristic at first, however a restricted finances — and the promise of a carefree filmmaker who couldn’t make herself uncomfortable with excessive asks — made “Fucktoys” totally hers. Constant crowds and powerful word-of-mouth have stored Sriram touring to screenings for months. Within the Czech Republic, she met a gaggle of highschool women who snuck out to see her film after 3 a.m.
“I used to be like, ‘The place do your mother and father suppose you might be?’ They usually’re like, ‘Oh, we mentioned we had been having a sleepover,’” mentioned Sriram. “Instantly, I used to be similar to, ‘Go to movie faculty. Please. Please. Go to movie faculty. We want extra feminine filmmakers.’”
With influences working down the American East Coast and deep into the South, Sriram will get in comparison with the legendary John Waters usually. The Pope of Trash met the ingenue filmmaker at a “Fucktoys” screening in Provincetown earlier this yr. That’s one other testomony to her attain and a motive to hope the proper firm (or individual) will again Sriram’s blossoming neighborhood at this vital time for ladies.
“First, I used to be crying. Then, I used to be making an attempt to speak to him about ‘Polyester.’ Then, I believe I blacked out,” Sriram mentioned. “I keep in mind I gave him a poster.”
Again at Fantasia Fest, a number of distributors advised IndieWire they had been stunned “Fucktoys” hadn’t discovered a house but, however additionally they mentioned Sriram confronted an uphill battle due to the title — partly impressed by the time period “fuckboy.” Sriram sees energy in retaining the title as a “controversial dialog piece,” and it didn’t stop her from getting a Particular Jury Point out within the New Flesh Competitors for Greatest First Characteristic at Fantasia.
Nonetheless, Sriram is aware of greater than most what it’s wish to be misjudged, and she or he’s decided to get her playfully subversive film to the “actual ones” who need it. For “Fucktoys,” the competition course of has been quite a bit like courting. At Fantasia, the unexpectedly romantic film made Sriram’s whole auditorium really feel like church. The filmmaker isn’t listening to distro wedding ceremony bells but, however she has religion that real love is on the market.
“As a lady, the minute you stroll out into the world, everybody goes to undertaking one thing onto you,” she mentioned. “I need ladies to really feel empowered. That’s my solely agenda. I’m a lady’s lady who needs ladies to really feel lovely, protected, and joyful, as a result of we’re so weak to so many assaults proper now. I lacked confidence for therefore lengthy, and I used to be burdened with all this internalized misogyny. However you set your self free once you cease self-policing.
“You set your self free once you cease asking, ‘Am I allowed to decorate like that?’ ‘Ought to I be speaking like that?’ ‘Ought to I be sexualizing myself as a severe director like that?’” she mentioned. “As an alternative, you say, ‘Fuck you. That is my life ceaselessly.’ And we select to guard one another — as a result of we’re sizzling women, and Trashtown is all we’ve acquired.”
“Fucktoys” final screened at Fantasia Fest 2025. Right here’s the place you may see it in August:
- Glints’ Rhode Island Worldwide Movie Competition — Windfall, RI
- Thursday, August 7 at 3:15 p.m. ET within the Windfall Showcase Cinema
- Atlanta Underground Movie Competition — Atlanta, GA
- Saturday, August 9 at 6:30 p.m. ET within the Limelight Theater
- Popcorn Frights Movie Competition — Hollywood, FL
- Thursday, August 14 at 9 p.m. ET at Cinema Paradiso
- Reel Queer Movie Competition — Little Rock, AR
- Friday, August 22 at 7 p.m. ET within the Ron Robinson Theater
- Baton Rouge Underground Movie Competition — Baton Rouge, LA
- Saturday, August 23 at 7:30 p.m. CT within the Manship Theater
- Sidewalk Movie Competition — Birmingham, AL
- Saturday, August 23 at 9:45 p.m. CT within the Lyric Theater
