Skip to main content
Dead Lover film image; female zombie corpse sneering at camera

Dead Lover

Book Now Book Now

A foul-smelling, lovelorn gravedigger (Grace Glowicki) strikes gold when she falls for a poet (Ben Petrie) who loves her stench. When her lover perishes at sea, she is left with only his ring finger, so she conducts a series of madcap experiments to resurrect him, creating a monster in the process. What’s a lady gravedigger to do when she gets in over her head? “Just keep digging! And digging… And digging.”

Gooble gobble! This one’s for the freaks. Glowicki zaps new life into a literary classic with her goofy sense of humour and a vintage, DIY aesthetic that stitches together twisted Lynchian horror, Looney Tunes zaniness, and the surreal eroticism of Kenneth Anger. With only four actors in the cast, co-writer Petrie, Leah Doz, and Lowen Morrow use layers of stage make-up and masses of gravity-defying wigs to portray an entire horde of townsfolk. Campy, outrageous, revolting, and surprisingly touching, Dead Lover is a fearless statement from one of Canada’s weirdest filmmaking duos.

 

Supported by

ZAK logo

Media Partner

Director
Cast

Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow

Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2025

Language

English

Film Contact
18+
83 min
Comedy Experimental & Avant Garde Horror & Sci-Fi Talent to Watch Women Directors
Featured Creatures

Book Tickets

Sunday October 12

8:45 pm
Closed Captioning Hearing Assistance
International Village 7
Book Now

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Rhianon Jones, Tristan Scott-Behrends, Matthew Miller, Lexi Tannenholtz, Olivia Niuewland

Producer

Yona Strauss, Ben Petrie, Grace Glowicki

Screenwriter

Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie

Cinematography

Rhayne Vermette

Editor

Lev Lewis

Production Design

Becca Brooks Morrin

Original Music

U.S. Girls

Grace Glowicki headshot

Grace Glowicki

Glowicki is an actor, writer, and director with a focus on unhinged-yet-emotional comedies. She has starred in many acclaimed independent films, including Strawberry Mansion (Sundance 2021), Until Branches Bend (TIFF 2022; SXSW 2023), Booger (Fantasia 2023), The Heirloom (Rotterdam 2024), and Her Friend Adam (Sundance 2016; SXSW 2016), for which she won a Sundance Special Jury Award for Outstanding Performance. Her debut feature, Tito, premiered at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Adam Yauch Hornblower Award. Dead Lover is Glowicki’s sophomore feature.

Filmography: Tito (2019)

Altered States

See more films in this series

Our Hero, Balthazar
Our Hero, Balthazar film image; upset man pressing his hands to his head

Our Hero, Balthazar

Dir. Oscar Boyson
91 min

A wealthy student's performative online videos put him on a collision course with an online troll, who may be planning an act of mass violence. Oscar Boyson's film is a searing examination of youth disaffected by the internet and driven to destruction.

The Rio Theatre International Village 10

A Useful Ghost

Dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
130 min

Wacky, whimsical, and always engaging, this tale about Thailand’s bloody modern history starts with a ghost in a vacuum cleaner and ends with a guerilla attack on an orgy. In between there’s romance, deadpan comedy, and subversive historical excavation.

The Rio Theatre
Decorado
Decorado film image; two cartoon mice sitting on a rooftop while a forest fire rages in the distance

Decorado

Dir. Alberto Vázquez
95 min

In existential crisis, a middle-aged mouse increasingly believes the world is unreal, much like a film set. As his suspicions grow increasingly credible, will he accept his fate, or hatch one last bid for freedom?

International Village 8 International Village 10
Night Stage
Night Stage film image; two men crouching by a large bowl under purple/pink lighting

Night Stage

Dir. Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon
117 min

Love becomes an act of defiance when a queer actor and a closeted politician discover a mutual fetish for public sex in the streets of Porto Alegre. A steamy, slow-burn erotic thriller with a dreamy neo-noir aesthetic.

International Village 8

Fucktoys

Dir. Annapurna Sriram
106 min

AP is a young sex worker in need of cash and a baby lamb to sacrifice after multiple psychics tell her she's cursed. Fucktoys is a pastel-coloured femme punk freak-out and neo-camp retelling of The Fool's Journey.

International Village 10

Foreigner

Dir. Ava Maria Safai
83 min

An Iranian teenager who recently immigrated to Canada is desperate to make friends at her new high school. Pressured to dye her hair blonde, she unleashes a demonic force rooted within her. A humourous coming-of-age horror from Ava Maria Safai.

International Village 10
The Plague
The Plague film image; boy holding onto the side of a swimming pool while in the water

The Plague

Dir. Charlie Polinger
95 min

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

The Rio Theatre International Village 9
Honey Bunch
Honey Bunch film image; man carrying a woman towards a stormy ocean

Honey Bunch

Dir. Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli
113 min

After waking from a coma with memory loss, Diane is taken to an experimental treatment centre in the wilderness by her husband Homer. Disturbing visions accompany her recovery, and as her memories return, Diane discovers dark truths about her marriage.

The Rio Theatre
Dead Lover
Dead Lover film image; female zombie corpse sneering at camera

Dead Lover

Dir. Grace Glowicki
83 min

A foul-smelling gravedigger’s romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley’s classic.

International Village 7