The body horror short MAN EATING PUSSY, written and directed by Emily Lawson, will have its World Premiere in the Midnight Short Competition at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2026.
Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the National Film Board of Canada, and a Panavision New Filmmakers Grant, the film centers on Freddie (Julian Richings), a dying man seeking what he calls a “birth in reverse.” In a dimly lit hotel room, he meets Kitty (Grace Glowicki), a sex worker with a surreal physical form, to fulfill his final request: to die inside her. What begins as a transactional encounter shifts into something more intimate, as the two characters confront mortality, identity, and care.
Lawson describes the project as a reclamation of horror imagery that often frames female bodies as sites of violence. Drawing from her early experiences acting in genre films, she positions the short as an exploration of the tension between eroticism and existential reckoning, collapsing themes of sex, birth, and death into a single narrative gesture.
The film also features Nicolette Pearse and Harrison Browne in supporting roles. It was produced by Lucy Belgum alongside Lawson, executive produced by Jibran Quiraishi and Max Retik, photographed by Gabriela Osio Vanden, and edited by Daniel Haack, with music by Spencer Creaghan.
MAN EATING PUSSY screens at 9:15PM CDT on Saturday, March 14, 2026, and 7:00PM CDT on Monday, March 16, 2026, at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas as part of SXSW’s Midnight Short Competition.
