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.
Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow
Canada
2025
English
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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
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)
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