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

CAST ---- TRAILER

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 as Gert in Mayday
Soko as Gert

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."

Havana Rose Liu and Grace Van Patten - Mayday
Havana Rose Liu and Grace Van Patten

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.”

TRAILER

Mayday video thumb

MAYDAY can be streamed on HULU.

CAST

Karen Cinorre
Karen Cinorre