Didn't Die

Director: Meera Menon
Screenwriters: Paul Gleason, Meera Menon

Institute History

  • 2025 Sundance Film Festival

Description

A podcast host desperately clings to an ever-shrinking audience in the zombie apocalypse.


Vinita (Kiran Deol) hosts a snarky post-apocalyptic podcast, hiding her fear behind an armor of ironic distance. Rabid “biters” roam the Earth, and Vinita's dwindling audience — including her traumatized siblings — live in quarantine. When her philandering ex Vincent (George Basil) suddenly arrives clutching a baby, Vinita's armor begins to crack.


Writer-director Meera Menon’s low-budget thriller is an homage to zombie pioneer George Romero and a moving drama about the emotional toll of living through civilizational crisis. Like Romero, Menon uses the genre to confront contemporary horrors, stoking pandemic-era anxieties through a distinctly millennial sensibility. Deploying stark black-and-white cinematography and an eerie soundtrack, Menon conjures a clammy atmosphere of dread. Deol adds color to the darkness, locating Vinita's vulnerability under a veneer of disaffection and gallows humor.—Matt Cornell


Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 30–February 2) and credentialed press and industry (January 29–February 2).



Screenings include closed and open captions, as well as audio description.

Screening Details

Credits

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