IDLE/WILD (2024)

Dating is hard. So when Annie suggests a unique first date — meet me at Idyllwild campsite, and bring your tent — Berit decides to go for it. Is this how it all starts? Or how it ends?

Director - Kaitlin Fontana

Director - Kaitlin Fontana

Director Biography - Kaitlin Fontana

Kaitlin Fontana is an Emmy-nominated TV and film writer, director, and producer, and a National Magazine award-winning essayist. In a not-so-distant past life, she was a music journalist. She was the host of the WGAE's podcast OnWriting for seasons 4-6.

Kaitlin participated in the 2024 Sundance Institute Feature Film Development Lab. Her feature film script, GIRLFRIEND ON MARS, is on the Black List. Her directorial debut, FRANCHESCA, was an official Sundance Film Festival selection. She is the writer and a producer of the true crime-meets-punk podcast PETER AND THE ACID KING (Imagine Audio), which was named a Best Podcast of 2023 by Vulture. She is a NYTVF Development Deal recipient (Audible) as well as a finalist in the HBOAccess Directing Fellowship. Kaitlin was a WriteHer List Honoree, an inaugural WGA/Made in New York Writers Room Fellow, Showtime Tony Cox Award winner, Nantucket Comedy Colonist, and Bitch List Honoree. She was a Field Producer on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

Kaitlin lives in San Francisco, CA and was born in Fernie, British Columbia, Canada, a distinction she shares with Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson.

Director Statement

IDLE/WILD is a mystery/horror/thriller in the vein of Under the Skin, with elements of Barbarian and Resurrection. It uses the accumulation of detail and dread — through Annie’s anxiety and Berit’s growing sense of dislocation — to tell an allegorical story of queer fear and the ways in which safety is perceived, understood, and abused in queer life.

I looked at myths and stories of wood nymphs and dryads as the foundation for a (spoiler) skin-stealing creature that uses queer attraction and intimacy to move from body to body. Like sea sirens, wood nymphs emerged in folk tales to explain the fates of people who went missing, were injured, or were murdered in the woods. The legend goes that nymphs use music and the allure of the female form to lure unsuspecting travelers to their deaths, and consume their bodies and souls for their own nourishment. The tale varies slightly from culture to culture, but anywhere there are woods, there are wood nymph stories.

I used practical FX to demonstrate Annie’s “monstrosity” as it emerges, along with the good old fashioned tools of story and editing to create the sense of horror, dread, and dislocation we feel as Berit’s fate grows more and more inevitable.

The LA-based grunge band SLUGS has agreed to lend their music to the production, including letting us rework "Cool World" in one of our scenes.

Please tell us your motivation for making your film:

Recently a friend and I were swapping bisexual dating tales. She had met someone online; since she was already going on a solo camping trip, she suggested they meet up there. “Wait,” I asked. “You met a stranger in the woods for a first date?” “Yes.” But, she clarified: “Not a man.” Whew. I relaxed, and then I started asking myself questions: Why was I more worried when I thought my friend was meeting a man as opposed to any other gender? (We know why but stay with me.) How do queer people perceive safety and danger differently than straight people do? If you’ve spent most of your life being afraid of men, what happens to fear when men aren’t around? And what if I used these questions to turn the “cabin in the woods” trope on its queer head? Thus IDLE/WILD was born. Soon I realized I was also writing about my own fears related to my place in the queer community and what safety or danger meant to me. As for my friend’s date: They had a very nice time, but they weren’t ready to commit. My friend woke up, safe and solo, in her tent. Annie and Berit’s story has…a different ending. IDLE/WILD is a mystery/horror/thriller that uses the accumulation of detail and dread — through Annie’s anxiety and Berit’s growing sense of dislocation — to tell an allegorical story of queer fear.

What are the themes and central messages you wanted to convey with your submission?:

I wanted to examine queer fear through the lens of a twisted first date story. How does the calculus around fear change when there are no cis het men around? What expectations and assumptions do we have and make? And how do we claim our agency without trampling on other marginalized people?

Please list ANY possible CONTENT / TRIGGER Warnings:

There are two scenes with sexual overtures.