SXSW 2025 Interview: SLANTED, Amy Wang Talks Looking Within, Absorbing Each Other

Joan Huang (Shirley Chen/McKenna Grace) doesn't fit in at her all-American high school.

Ignored by her peers at best, subjected to racist bullying at worst, she and her friend Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) sit far from the others in the lunch hall. But Joan can't help but dream of being accepted by the influencer clique of popular white girls.

Back home after school is a different world, speaking Mandarin with her mother and father over rice-based dishes, being present. On her phone in her room, she takes selfies with filters to make her appear whiter. The app developer DMs her. She's in the top 0.001% of their user base, and they have a proposition for her: a surgery that can make her white. It's a life-changing procedure, and the results will be permanent.

It's an uneasy logline, but Slanted captures an under-discussed diasporic feeling that Chinese-Australian debut director Amy Wang wants to confront head-on. In an enjoyable Zoom conversation, we explore the many shifts, tonal and racial, that her film undertakes and the climates and landscapes that it enters into.

Where did the idea for this film emerge from?

In 2021, there was a spa shooting in Atlanta where a bunch of Asian American women were murdered. It really jolted me, and it made me afraid. It made me reflect on my childhood and being Chinese-Australian growing up in Sydney. A big thing that came to mind during that moment was this feeling that I'd had as a teenager, where I'd wake up every morning and think "Wouldn't life just be easier if I was white?"

So I took that, and I started thinking about strange situations and movie ideas. I came up with this idea: What if this teenage girl wanted to be white so much that she actually did become white, and it became this nightmare.

When you were pitching and developing the film, did people tell you that they thought it was a bad idea? And were those people white?

Great question, but I don't think so. It was kind of crazy, I didn't actually pitch it around to anybody except for the producers that I ended up working with.

One of the producers, Trevor Wall, is a close friend. He's half black half white, and grew up in America. He immediately knew how deeply this would resonate with people of color. So he championed it from the beginning and brought it to the man who he was working for at the time, Mark Ankner, who is a white man, and he loved the concept. They were the only people I pitched it to. They jumped on, and got me the money to make it, which is incredible.

You take patriotic American imagery very far in this film, satirizing and sending it up until we're in a kind of unreality that's quite alienating as a viewer. Was that your own perception of the US as an outsider?

I think it was easier to do that because I'm not American. Growing up in Australia, I grew up on American TV. I never went to prom, but I knew how big prom was. I come from a country where guns are illegal, and we have universal health care. America's always been this foreign place, and that made it easier to satirize.

Tell me about directing a white actor in the role of an Asian woman, because that must be interesting for everyone involved.

[Laughing.] Yes, yes.

That was definitely scary. McKenna [Grace] had to speak Mandarin, and that was something I was afraid about. I made sure she learned Mandarin in pre-production.

The two actresses had many sessions with me and did a lot of imitation work, not only in the voice, but in the mannerisms and the physicality. McKenna was so open to learning about the Asian American experience and the Asian Australian experience. We had a lot of deep chats -- her, Shirley and myself -- just about what it's like walking through the world, you know, looking the way that we do. I think they both really absorbed each other's essences and did a great job.

Do you consider this film to be body horror? And if so, what body horror works shaped this film?

It's interesting. I think the main genre of the film is comedy satire. But, body horror-wise, I grew up watching a lot of David Cronenberg. I'm sure he inadvertently influenced the type of body horror that I use in this film.

I'm not going to not mention The Substance, even though I came up with the concept and made the movie before The Substance came out. It's been so cool to see how that movie has opened the floodgates for the rest of us.

But yes, I'd say Cronenberg. I love The Fly. I love Videodrome. I grew up on those movies.

I'm curious as to what audience you had in mind making this film. It's confrontational. You've got hallmarks of American indie comedy, while you position your protagonist and perspective as culturally other and semi-outside of that. How do you ensure that you bring these diverse audiences along with you?

When I wrote the script, I wanted whoever was reading it to think that it was Mean Girls and for it to basically turn into a nightmare. I do think this movie is for Gen Z, I think it's for a younger audience. The people that we cast have such a wide reach in that market.

And I definitely made the film for Gen Z, to help them deal with all of the feelings that a teenager feels, especially if you're a person of colour living in America -- to look within themselves and deal with similar emotions to Joan. Hopefully it helps them realize that maybe the other side isn't as good as they think it is.

This film is heart-sinking to watch. It's an interesting moment that we're in of films about identity that are specifically about being alienated from one's body. You've mentioned THE SUBSTANCE, there's also GET OUT, there's I SAW THE TV GLOW -- there's a wider conversation happening in cinema around visible identity. Were you aware of adding to that discourse in making this film?

Not really. But that's cool, because you're totally right. I've seen all those films, and I'm a big fan of each of them. I wasn't really aware of that when I was thinking up the concept. Maybe, again, it was subconsciously around me -- and for those filmmakers too -- whatever was going on in the world and around them influenced them similarly.

For me, I just wanted to make a cautionary tale. I wanted to deal with something that was extremely personal to me, this topic that I think can be difficult to swallow sometimes. People don't like to deal with this idea of shame when it comes to being a person of color. I wanted to do something really personal, and I hoped that it would resonate with others.

Zooming out to a more general, perhaps white American audience, you're emerging at a time when we have this wave of Asian American breakout films such as EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE and PAST LIVES. This film is more abrasive than those. You're packaging it within a similarly glossy aesthetic, but you go places with it. How do you feel about emerging within that moment, playing at SXSW?

It's so cool. I'm so thankful that these incredible filmmakers like Celine Song, the Daniels, Chloe Zhao, and John Chu have really paved the way.

And I know the style of filmmaking that I like. I love pushing buttons, I love confronting people. I'll continue to do that with the types of films I'll make in the future. It feels really cool to hopefully follow in their footsteps and keep making art.

What do you want your audiences to take away from SLANTED, and what have you taken away from making it?

I think so many people go through life thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, and I want people to realize that maybe it's not. You have to find your version of what belonging means, and not follow what other people think you have to be or look like, to fully embrace yourself. And that has to come from you.

This movie has been such a wild journey for me. So many ups and downs -- right now lots of highs. I've learned so much. A big thing in my filmmaking journey that I've learned is that, in script form, a lot of the scenes were overwritten. Filming it, editing it, so many things got simplified down. That's something that I'm going to take into my next film. It was a huge learning curve for me.

Slanted enjoys its World Premiere at SXSW 2025. It screens again today at the Violet Crown Cinemas.