Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant is the slimy, bombastic debut feature of imaginative Kiwi writing and directing duo THUNDERLIPS (Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor) and is produced by Wifties Alix Whittaker, Morgan Leigh Stewart & Ilai Amar.
The film stars Hannah Lynch (The Rule of Jenny Penn), Arlo Green (Nautilus), Yvette Parsons (The Power of the Dog), Jackie van Beek (The Breaker Upperers) and Jonny Brugh (What We Do in the Shadows) and was made with support from the New Zealand Film Commission.
Now, after wowing festival audiences both in NZ and offshore, the film rolls out for kiwi audiences across the motu.
Expanding on the success of the 2024 short, this sci-fi comedy follows Mary (Hannah Lynch) and Boo (Arlo Green), both 20-something shut-ins living with their mums. Mary’s dreams of moving out are put on hold by a projectile-insemination situation that escalates into an unwanted alien pregnancy and she must overcome sceptical doctors, a useless baby-daddy and her oversharing mum in order to reclaim her life. The result is an outrageous story packed with practical creature effects, dark humour, plenty of slime and a whole lot of heart.
To celebrate the release, the fab folk at Madman have gifted us 5 double passes to see the film anywhere in Aotearoa, more on that after the marvellous interview below with producer Alix Whittaker :)
ALIX WHITTAKER - PRODUCER | MUM, I’M ALIEN PREGNANT
Q: Alix, let's start with the obvious… your pregnancy was the catalyst for a film about a woman becoming alien pregnant! Can you take us back to that moment and how that idea came to life?
AW: The idea came slowly over some 9 months. As my belly was swelling and moving in strange ways, Jordan and I kept remarking to each other how alien it looked and felt. The alien-ness of the feeling in juxtaposition to our awareness that procreation is deeply human… made for a strange experience. Our pregnancy was eventually over-due, and during a routine scan to check amniotic fluids levels, we found out that our baby was breech, which means she was the “wrong” way around, trying to come out butt-first instead of head-first. The next few weeks before she was born were wild; I was feverishly researching approaches to breech birth around the world, and trying everything from acupuncture to laying upside down for long stretches and physical manipulation of my belly to try to get our baby to turn around - but she simply would not budge. The way a number of the male doctors talked to me through those few weeks was confronting for Jordan -> he hadn’t had that experience of the medical institution before. In the months that followed, as we spent time together across the fourth trimester, in the milky haze of new-babyhood, we talked to a lot of other new parents, and through hearing their stories and sharing ours we were so profoundly changed by the whole experience, it felt like these were stories that we didn’t hear or see enough of before having the experience ourselves, and we realised we wanted to make a movie about it - about birth. We got excited about a sci-fi metaphor for what it’s like to be real-human pregnant and contend with the medical institution.
Q: There’s something wonderfully outrageous about turning pregnancy into comedy body horror, but underneath it is a very human story. What did you want the alien pregnancy to say about the experience of being pregnant?
AW: That it feels weird and alien. That it’s messy and slimy. That it all happens way faster than you expect. That it can be hard to find the help you need. That mothers are amazing, and so are grandmothers. That dads can step up if/when they want to. That every person should get to choose for themselves whether they want to be a parent. That women should have access to safe abortions everywhere. That the medical institution should listen to women more about what they want for their own bodies.
Q: The film has had quite a journey, from short film to the feature. How important was making the short in proving that this crazy idea could actually work?
AW: It was extremely important! Before we made the short, we had a good solid developed feature script for Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, and we were pitching it in the marketplace and talking to the NZ Film Commission about it; there were two red flags (as it were) that kept cropping up; 1) these directors were music video and TVC directors, and so people wondered if they could in-fact direct a film? and 2) the feature itself was extremely execution dependent - the marketplace kept wanting to see concepts, they were looking for a better understanding of how we’d pull all the alien stuff off. We realised pretty quickly that the NZFC’s Catalyst Short Film Fund was exactly what we needed - so we took a few scenes from the feature and turned them into a stand-alone short film. Not only did we prove the directors, and the concept - but we also proved the wider team. Hannah Lynch as Mary, and many of our HOD’s including Scale Studios on the prosthetics and puppetry - so many came with us from the short to the feature, and that strong team building over time really meaningfully contributed to the quality of the feature film.
Q: You’ve worked across music videos, shorts and features and this is your first NZ Film Commission-funded feature as a producer. What has this film taught you about producing?
AW: Oh, soooooooo many things, too many to list here. Most importantly, that it’s okay to acknowledge that you don’t understand something and ask to learn about it, people are really nice and they will teach you. Faking it till you make it is out - owning when you don’t know something, and taking the opportunity to learn is in. Also, feature films take YEARS. Development takes years. Financing takes years. Production itself can take more than a year. Festivals, another year. Theatrical distribution, and then TVOD, and then SVOD,; more years. Committing to a feature film as a producer is a little bit like committing to having a baby - the commitment to shepherding the project through every stage of it’s life. To illustrate this point, this film was inspired by our own pregnancy and birth, and the film will have been in cinemas for three weeks when our child turns 10 years old, it’s taken years of dedicated effort to bring this story to the screen.
Q: You clearly love bold creative voices and big ideas. What is it that makes you want to get behind a project and fight to get it made?
AW: Falling in love with it. When I encounter a story, and it gets in under my skin, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and it matters to me - that’s when I find myself leaning into it and working out how to make it.
Q: There’s a really strong theme of autonomy and choice running through the film. How important was it to you that women who have been pregnant - and women who never want to be - could both feel seen by it?
AW: This was hugely important to us. Across the early years of the development of this feature screenplay, when our daughter was a wee baby, we were living in an artists community at the bottom of Maungakiekie, and one of the women living there had terrible endometriosis, she was certain she never wanted to have children and had been certain of that fact for years, and yet was being denied access to medical care that would help her with her truly terrible endometriosis because it would render her unable to have children in the future, and the doctors couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t change her mind despite her insistence that she knew what she wanted. In the later years of developing the film, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and we were horrified. The medical institution not listening to woman about what they know they want for their own bodies was everywhere around us as we developed this film, and became an integral part of the work.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of taking Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant from that original idea to a feature film — and what has been the most rewarding?
AW: Every part of taking this project from idea to feature film has been challenging! Haha. Maybe the most challenging bit was the edit. We just didn’t have it. It wasn’t there. It didn’t work the way we wanted it to. Things that we loved on the page in the screenplay didn’t work in the film. So during the edit, we re-wrote most of the third act, and also the very beginning of the film - and we shot a significant amount of the finished film in pick ups. And I am so very glad that we did - because the film is way better for that work, but it was hard work. The most rewarding - watching the film with audiences, hearing them laugh and gasp, and receiving their responses afterwards. So many people have come up to me after screenings to tell me what the film meant to them personally, and that has been truly remarkable and deeply rewarding.
Q: And finally, you’ve got an exciting slate of films developing with Hot Candle Wave. After this experience, what kinds of stories are you most excited to bring into the world next?
AW: Stories that move me. Stories that feel urgent and important, that demand to be told now, that stick with me in the back of my brain demanding that I figure out how to bring them into being.
ENDS
Ngā mihi Alix for the insightful kōrero!
And to win a double pass to see the film, be one of the first five people to email us here at office@wiftnz.org.nz telling us why you deserve to see a kiwi movie for free!
Good Luck :)