MAYDAY

Director: Karen Cinorre
Written by: Karen Cinorre
Soko's character: Gert
With: Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth
Released: 1 October 2021 (US)
Length: 1hr 40min
Genre: Fantasy
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1

An electrical outage opens a portal and Ana, a young restaurant worker, flees her abusive and oppressive situation, and passes through into a world populated by rebellious sirens.

Soko told Matt Grobar of Deadline: “I feel like Karen [Cinorre] really established that like day one, we were all hanging out and making sure that we had a round table, just bringing up our experience and sharing a lot of very vulnerable things, like our family background and our trauma, and what in our character reminds us of what we’ve been through, and what is the movie evoking for each and every one of us, in very different ways. That was also such a sweet way to bond, and I feel like that’s very specific to shooting with so many women, establishing something very sweet and nurturing, and caring, and gentle and open.

Slideshow - Soko in 'Mayday'

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Kei Ryan wrote about Mayday for Loud and Clear: Let's Talk About Movies: "...thematically, there’s quite a lot of stuff going on. There’s an angle on feminine community – investigated through imagery of radio networks, sea life, and the map of stars above. There’s a subplot about our protagonists being sirens – luring soldiers to their deaths. There’s illusions to the importance of individuality – a single person being enough to change, or destroy, an entire world. There’s explorations of misogyny and misandry, heroic and psychopathic behaviour, trauma and memory, and likely more possible readings I either didn’t notice or have since forgotten."

Soko, Mia Goth, and Havana Rose Liu - Mayday
Soko, Mia Goth, and Rose Liu in 'Mayday'

Writer/director Cinorre told Dawn Borchardt of Cinema Femme: "I’m very obsessed with the myth of the sirens; it’s always been a fascination for me. I was making my short film 'Plume', and I learned through my research that during WWII, they used women’s voices as weapons. They would have these radio stations, like Tokyo Rose had one, and there were these women who they put on the radio, and they would use their voices to try to demoralize the soldiers. They literally had radio shows where they would sing and use their voices to humiliate them and make them feel demoralized. I was like 'oh my god, women’s voices used as weapons sounds like the siren myth.' With that realization, I got a constellation of ideas."

Peter Debruge of Variety called Karen Cinorre a "natural world-builder" and continued: "Like the Sirens of Greek mythology dolled up in Wes Anderson-esque Girl Scout uniforms, the four young women in Karen Cinorre’s stylish yet surface-level feminist fantasy “Mayday” lure off-screen soldiers to their deaths with invented pleas for help. “They can’t resist a lady in distress,” says Marsha (Mia Goth), coaching newcomer Ana (Grace Van Patten) on how to craft an enticing SOS call. “They like their girls softer, with less authority.”

MAYDAY can be streamed on TUBI.

CAST

TRAILER

Soko in Mayday video thumb
Karen Cinorre
Karen Cinorre