Written by Hailey Passmore
After the success of its premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in the early months of this year and as part of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May, Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby (2025) has connected with more than your average film viewer. With a nationwide release in the United States beginning 27 June, it’s finally hitting UK cinemas after premiering at and opening the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 14 August 2025. With Picturehouse Entertainments holding the distribution rights for the film in the UK, they kindly allowed the BFI, as well as the Barbican Centre, to show a preview of the film on 17 August 2025, followed by a Q&A with Eva Victor themselves.
I had the chance to watch Sorry, Baby at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in May, and the film truly hit me harder than I originally expected it would – in all the best ways, even if it was an emotional roller coaster. Director, writer, and actor Eva Victor is a triple threat in their directorial debut. As I wrote in my review for Sorry, Baby, there is such a beautiful and encapsulating silence placed throughout its 104-minute runtime that causes the viewer to infer and not be suffocated by the dark moments in protagonist Agnes’ (Victor) life. It is clear that when writing and crafting her debut, Victor focused on the importance of Agnes being the first one to talk about what happened to her. For Agnes not to be watched but to be heard. This aspect is one that truly puts Sorry, Baby above so many other films. While the film may be dark and focused on a terrible tragedy, the moments of laughter and reflection emulate pure joy and compassion for the audience to experience.
It’s hard to be a person sometimes, not even day-to-day, but to just be. For Agnes, it’s even harder. Ever since something bad happened to her, they’re left feeling trapped in time. With her friends around her, nearby and far, she witnesses life move on for them, but perhaps not for her. At least, life doesn’t move forward for Agnes anymore, not in the way it normally should. Grad school is hard enough, but when an inexcusable event causes your whole life to be turned upside down, what can you expect to do? We witness Agnes’ journey into the darkness while trying to find some kind of light after this tragic event. Years later – or in the present time of the film – Agnes’ friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) shares a milestone with her best friend, and Agnes truly realizes how stuck she has been. How do you move forward when you’ve been reliving one moment on repeat for years? Can you ever really do so?
Seeing Sorry, Baby at Cannes, I dove deep into the film and how and why it was so successful and moving.
Leaving Cannes with such a different feeling, it has been amazing seeing where Sorry, Baby has led Eva Victor in such a small amount of time. I have found it inspiring what she has been able to do with her directorial debut, and being able to see her speak about it in person was a special experience.
Following the preview screening, Little White Lies Magazine Digital Editor, Hannah Strong, hosted a Q&A session with writer, director, and actor Eva Victor. Throughout her questions, it became clear that Strong took the time and care when curating what she would ask Victor.
Some quotes are slightly edited to help with clarity for those who were not there to hear the questions asked in person and feel the atmosphere of the room.
From the beginning, Strong talked to Victor about why they chose to create a film like this. In response, Victor began to discuss how, when making a movie, it becomes a process of “screaming out into the world” to see if “anyone is there to listen”. They made their film for the “person [they] were before [they] loved film, and the person who needed the film to feel like a hug”. Victor herself states that she “[likes] when people who are real people see it…Not a cinephile.” Though they are still pleased when a cinephile appreciates the film as well.
Strong followed up by diving into how Sorry, Baby began as an idea in Victor’s head. As a viewer, she believes that it came from somewhere personal and raw for Victor and that it must have been quite the experience. Strong asked Victor to explain a bit about how they first began to form the idea that would spark into the film. Victor’s response:
“I really wanted to write a film about trying to heal from something bad and this sort of life-saving friendship that gets you through a hard time…I was interested in not showing violence in the film and instead centering on joy and the rebellion of everyday little joys…the real slow journey of healing.”
“I think I started understanding the time I wanted to write about as what I’ve been calling the lost years, like the years after something bad happens when everyone looks away and gets back to their lives as they should, but you’re stuck trying to put the pieces together of what happened and make sense of the world now that something’s completely shifted in you.”
To focus on the “five years and those were the years [where we] follow Agnes”. As she began to understand the time, it “became easier to write…and that’s how I sort of unlocked structurally how to centre on healing and not violence in the film.”
Victor’s first draft of the film, as she discussed, was written in 2021 as she locked herself in a cabin over the winter. Once it was written, it took her a few years to feel confident enough to declare to other creatives and her collaborators that she was ready to direct it. Having had no experience directing before, they wanted to prepare themselves and be able to do a good job. So as not to sacrifice any creative aspects of the film, Victor knew they needed to take the time to learn. While discussing with Strong, Victor declared:
“...it’s been a journey and…I didn’t really ever get a call [saying] the film was happening. It was just like, well, we’re booking your flight to Boston. And I was like, well, that feels like we’re shooting you guys.”
As the audience giggled, Victor continued:
“It was a slow journey…we shot last year and properly eight months in the edit. We premiered it in January. So it’s been a bit of a ride.”
And a ride it has been. Sorry, Baby is a growing success, connecting with audiences all around the globe. With both cinephiles and the average person, it seems as if there isn’t anyone who can’t connect with the film in some fashion. Listening to Victor speak about just the preparation they invested in the creation of Sorry, Baby creates a stronger sensation of how much of a passion project this was for them. How, even with their directorial debut, are they able to do so much? It makes you excited to see where they go next.
Continuing on about their baby, their passion project, Victor discussed how important it was to be able to hold onto the film for as long as they could, before giving it to the creatives:
“Having the couple of years where it’s your baby, it’s purely your baby…[then] it becomes everyone else’s baby as well. But at that time…I want to give it away. And then, you know, now I’m like nostalgic for the days when I was looking out the window in Maine, desperate for someone to be on the other side of this film, and now there are people on the other side, and I’m like, shut the windows, close the doors. You know, life is like that, right?”
Victor talks about Sorry, Baby, and how it came to be in such a pure and genuine way. They make it easy to see that they’re human too; they don’t stand above anyone else. In creating this film, all they did was show the young filmmaker that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. And with the above quote, it’s important to remember to keep your babies close and be ready to let them go, because once you do, your life might change forever. But remember the good times and how it all started. Never forget where it and you started.
Strong then went on to talk about the qualities found in directors who are not only able to write and direct, but to star in their films themselves. She cannot wrap her head around the idea of being able to direct yourself AND other people. Not only did Victor do this, but she also wrote the film. For a JV feature, Victor did not make it easy for herself. Strong asked Victor how they found that experience, directing themself while also directing other people, even the script continuity too.
“...I thank god someone else was looking at the script continuity. Because of that, I mean, there was like a bob and that, to me, I was like, are we in the bob?”
That caused another chuckle from the audience. Proving once again how genuinely comedic and nice Victor is as a person.
“I run pretty anxious, and so my instinct is to always prepare, prepare, prepare, because then if I fail, it’s not my fault…So I worked very, very diligently before the film to prepare the film as a director and also as an actor…So by the time I got to shooting the film, it actually felt like this real release to get to say the words and have them be the real words of the film.”
“There’s definitely a completely different flow to set when you were acting and directing, which is, I found the most, I mean the first two days and the first week we scheduled a bit lighter so we could find that flow.”
Then, addressing the one thing all filmmakers wonder when beginning the process of how to fund their film:
“...most of the questions when people were deciding whether to give me money to make the film or not were how are you going to do that? And I was like ‘Well, I have ideas, but we have to see because we’ll have to figure it out together’.”
Directors and actors alike need feedback. There’s no doubt about it. But it is where and who they get the feedback from that is most important. Victor discussed that they only had a few people they trusted to give them feedback. Otherwise, if they’d allowed feedback from everyone, there would be too many notes to look at, and she would be unsure of whose ideas to use.
Moving to the cast, Strong and Victor discussed how brilliant the main actors each are. Naomi Ackie, Victor believes, is a true British gem, and that she can do anything. Before having met with her, Victor had seen Lady Macbeth, The End of the Fucking World, and the Whitney Houston movie, where she transformed significantly in each one. When Victor met with Ackie, they were surprised as to how goofy and warm she was. Victor believes that Ackie’s performance in Sorry, Baby is out of this world, and she brings sunshine to the film that could otherwise be quite dark. Victor told the audience that they believe that without Ackie, no one would have laughed during the film. Which, of course, warranted a laugh from the audience, by which Victor responded, telling the audience, “Don’t laugh!”
“...the gift she gave me, which I think you can feel in the film but isn’t part of what you see, is she came to set the first day, and I remembered I was like, should I wait for this train to go by in the background because it’s cool? It’s the first shot. My producer was like, don’t fucking wait. That’s crazy. You’re going to waste time. And Naomi looked at me and said ‘whatever you want to do, I’ll do. I’m here for you.’”
“To have someone trust you before you prove to them that you’re making a film that they find valuable…that is the gift of a lifetime for her to have given me trust…I have a lot of gratitude for her.”
“I remember saying when we were trying to find her, ‘Agnes is the moon and Lydie is the sun. So we need the sun.’ And once Naomi read with me, it was like, okay, we have the sunshine.”
To hear about how such a magical bond was created elevates the connection between Agnes and Lydie in the film, beyond just what the audience can see. Films that develop friendships outside of the film itself are absolutely beautiful, and you know that they’re something different.
Strong then flipped from the “beautiful sunshine” that is Lydie, to the men in the film, who are varying different breezes of men. Louis Cancelmi (who plays Decker in Sorry, Baby) is what Victor describes as “incredible.” They were on a television show with him and loved him back then. When Victor asked him to do a table read for the film, as a favour, to work on the script, they were lucky that they got a readout of him. After the script read, Victor’s phone blew up, and their producers were all over the idea of having Cancelmi in the film. In Victor’s words:
“I felt really grateful…to have someone I knew and had worked with before. And also, I mean, his gift really is care. We had so many calls before talking about how do we build this relationship so that it doesn’t undermine Agnes, so that you don’t feel like he’s creepy, and that you understand why there’s an energy there. Like, there actually has to be creative energy and flow between them for a betrayal to be a betrayal.”
Overall, the roles the male actors played in Sorry, Baby, though they were quite small, contributed a lot to the character of Agnes and her development over time.
Not only does Eva Victor know how to write, direct, and act, but they also know how to talk to audiences and hosts about their process. This post-screening Q&A provided a lot of insight into Victor’s creative process and opened up the world and importance of Sorry, Baby even more.
Sorry, Baby is being distributed across UK cinemas by Picturehouse Entertainment beginning 22 August, and is now streaming in the US and Canada. Be sure to watch Sorry, Baby to see the great gift Victor has given the world, and for a big hug.
Read my review here: Sorry, Baby (Victor, 2025)
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