Synopsis
A med school dropout in crippling student debt swipes a wild couple on a dating app to make some fast cash.
Director’s Biography
Jaanelle Yee is a Cuban-American writer and filmmaker from Miami, currently living in New York as a recent grad from the Masters Directing program at School of Visual Arts. Stuff she has directed ranges from short films, music videos, fundraiser trailers, glamour videography, and more. Her creative style explores themes of feminism in horror, mythology in modern settings, and plays on words taken literally to an absurd degree.
SELL YOUR BODY is a modern day urban legend about how peculiar it is to meet strangers over the internet with the intention of bringing them into your home. I wanted to tell a socially relevant story about being buried in student debt for the rest your life, sexuality in the dating app age, human trafficking where it is least expected – Some of the most common anxieties I’ve picked up within the last few years from constantly hanging around 20-something year old women.
The story that formed in my mind after listening to friends’ most outspoken fears for the past year is a a character piece with horrific and comedic elements woven together with the mundane. The snappy protagonist leads us through her wacky idea in a Mockumentary/Reality TV Confessional style that leaves you feeling lackadaisical to the darkness unfolding. The breaking of the fourth wall in the characters’ interaction with the camera plays up the audience’s connection to the pervasion of hook up culture in the digital age – They’re looking to you for solidarity.
I wanted to make a dark comedy about youth culture that resonates with nervous laughter. I hope there is a relatable fear for everyone in the glimpses at a student exploited by the loan industry, predatory behavior that has become the norm in the dating scene, the need to present bi-curiosity as “sexy” to feel comfortable exploring it, and the ever-looming threat that trusting the wrong person on a night out can be the end of you. It all comes together whimsically sharp for an audience that lives in today’s dating app culture.
