Ingrid Goes West

Director: Matt Spicer
Screenwriters: David Branson Smith, Matt Spicer

Institute History

Description

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic, Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith

Ingrid is an unstable young woman with a checkered past of obsessive behavior. She secretly moves to Los Angeles to get close to Taylor Sloane—an Instagram “lifestyle guru” with a fabulous artist boyfriend, a camera-ready terrier, and an array of new products and brands to promote to her followers. After Ingrid adopts a Taylor-made identity for herself, her machinations to prove she’s BFF material for her Insta idol are underway—that is, until she meets Taylor’s obnoxious brother Nicky, who threatens to tear down her façade.

Aubrey Plaza is fearless in her performance as Ingrid, whose elaborate fabrications and unsettling behavior lead to an avalanche of harrowing and squirm-worthy situations. In the modern world of self-appointed social media “influencers,” where emojis are preferred over real emotion, writer/director Matt Spicer and co-writer David Branson Smith brilliantly satirize the ideal lives we create online, yet at the same time acknowledging the effects of a technologically dominated society where the human needs for truth and connection are still essential to our being.

— Kim Yutani

Screening Details

Sundance Film Festival Awards

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