For our latest digital cover, we spoke with actor Leah Doz who stars in the horror-comedy Dead Lover, now playing in theaters following an impressive festival run. The film made waves at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Rotterdam, and TIFF, building a strong following for its genre-blurring approach.
Leah appears alongside filmmaker and co-star Grace Glowicki, who also wrote, directed, and produced the Dead Lover. Together with Ben Petrie and Lowen Morrow, the four-person cast takes on multiple roles in a wildly inventive, Frankenstein-inspired world that blurs theatre and cinema.
Dead Lover follows a lonely gravedigger who, after finally finding her ideal partner, loses him in a tragic accident at sea. Driven by grief, she embarks on a series of experiments to bring him back to life, an attempt that spirals into grotesque consequences and an unexpected kind of love.
Leah discusses her admiration for Glowicki’s filmmaking style and Dead Lover‘s collaborative process, playing multiple roles, including the grotesque Creature, the film’s strong festival reception, and her upcoming film she directed.
Exclusive photos for Popternative Magazine by Mike Ng.
What drew you to wanting to be part of Dead Lover—was it the genre, the storyline, or something else that appealed to you?
Leah: Grace is a dear friend of mine. When she approached me about collaborating, I was already a huge fan of her past work – she takes a lot of risk with subversion and expressionism – so I was in on that alone, without question. I also think indie arthouse cinema is where screen work is most interesting in Canada, so I look out for those opportunities – and they tend to be lateral opportunities where peers are working with peers, developing work together. I think that’s where all the good stuff is these days.
Then I read a draft of the script, and her world was so distinct; I loved its theatricality, and that she was leaning into grotesquery – it felt like permission to blow open the confines that can come with over-adhering to naturalism. Life is full of all sorts of extreme expressions, but I find a lot of mainstream content can often dilute performance style into something overly-confined and unfortunately vanity-based that’s actually sometimes less real than life…. Anyway, there’s a playground the film lives in that’s absurd and gives ‘larger than life’ physicality and vocal choices credibility on-screen – we just sort of believe this world because the actors believe in it… it’s very actor-led, which I love and is so rooted in theatre tradition.
The whole creation and execution was also ‘more is more’, which was a gift – we could never be ‘too much’. I think a lot of people, myself included, have felt like we’ve come from places where we were intentionally or unintentionally kept in corners for being too much of something – and this film was like, ‘That and more, please.’ So much fun…. I can’t underestimate how generative having fun is. It sounds simple. But it’s hard to create that environment, and a real privilege to get to do that. I actually think this kind of play and freedom to be able to go to extremes in physical and vocal expression, to be imaginatively DIY, and purposefully grotesque has its own politic, especially right now. To get to make sounds and shapes with your body as an actor that completely defy social acceptance is transgressive – it’s a ‘fly your freak flag proudly’ situation I’m into… and I do believe it can inspire.
What was it like working with Grace Glowicki—not only as your co-star in the film, but also as its writer and director?
Leah: Grace and I are both from Edmonton, so there’s something kismet in having met each other as artists in Toronto, despite not knowing each other growing up. We mutually share an interest in the unconventional and non-normative. There’s a rebelliousness in her singularity that I deeply respect and find kinship in. Beyond her incredible talents as a performer and creator, she’s also a phenomenal collaborator. That word gets thrown around, but it’s genuine in her case and I learned a lot from her approach. She’d been developing the film on its feet with Ben and Lowen long before I joined the ensemble. By the time I did, she had really honed the size of the world and its surrealism – so she was clear from day one rehearsing that we were not adhering to realism, and though the arc of the story was developed, there were all these interstitial plot points she invited us to thread collectively.
So I really love how we made this film as much as I love the film itself. Grace was clear about collaboration being an artistic intention of hers, given that it was four actors playing multiple parts; she wanted it to feel like a theatre troupe – and so her philosophy was very much ‘best idea wins’. She invited a level of story development contribution from us as actors that is so rare in auteurism, and yet she found this deft balance also staying true to her unique vision, which I found inspiring. Rehearsing was an imaginatively boundless time and hilarious. There are elements of the film that we free-associated into existence and some we even came up with on the day… I think it’s brave she let us do that, and a testament to her talent.
What can you tell us about your characters in the film, and how did preparing for them compare to your past ones?
Leah: I play several characters in Dead Lover. My ‘main’ character is the Creature, who is Gravedigger’s grossly failed attempt to bring her Dead Lover back to life. Creature is, vulgar, largely unintelligible, hyper-sexual, and kintsugi-ed from a bunch of necrophilia-based ingredients….and electrocution. So a complete Wackadoo. My favourite. And on brand. We were all aware of the Frankenstein tropes that would be associated with playing ‘riffs’ on those iconic characters, so the trap there would’ve been trying to ‘best’ a whole canon of Frankenstein monsters.
But Grace had (hilariously) never read Frankenstein and I adopted the same perspective of really just building something from scratch that was present to our world, our unique ingredients – yes, some degree of awareness of whose shoulders those archetypes stand on, but really listening to I’d say a less ‘pop-culture influenced’ part of my imagination and jamming from a desire to throw myself into vulgarity and raw sexual desperation because those were the elements of the character that felt the most transgressive to me… because they’re the most collectively repressed… so I just wanted to turn the dial into overdrive on those, which was… so fun. I do lean a little exhibitionist.
I’m so grateful Grace values rehearsal and sees its importance. I come from a theatre background, so rehearsal makes sense to me and I find it counterproductive to silo actors until production where you’re then rolling the camera on first impulses and guesswork without any sense of cohesion or development together. But for Dead Lover, we solidly rehearsed for about a month and half before shooting in Toronto; we were in dance studios, so we had wall-to-wall mirrors, hours of playing around watching each other, building bits, honing character.
We shot on 16mm, and Grace would share Dailies once the film had been developed and digitized two days after each shoot day, so though we didn’t have playback on set, those Dailies were such beneficial feedback, because they would reveal just how much permission there was to keep going bigger. I was literally discovering from the Dailies how far we could continue to push physical boundaries and then would make it intentional to come in the next day and just… turn it up hotter. Becca Brooks Morrin’s black-box theatre production design and Rhayne Vermette’s cinematography could hold such an infinite amount of expression. They’re both brilliant.
What can audiences expect when they watch Dead Lover?
Leah: It’s punk-goth-camp-horror-comedy-Grimm fairytale. Vulgar, morbid, theatrical, hilariously perverted. And if you see it in Stink-O-Vision, it literally stinks. And that’s beautifully intentional.
What has the festival journey of Dead Lover been like, and how have audiences responded to it so far?
Leah: Dead Lover had a blessed festival run which included Sundance, Rotterdam, SXSW, and TIFF. There’s such a devout following for genre and Midnight Madness flicks in a way I only learned through this experience. By the time we came to TIFF, which was our homecoming and the first Stink-O-Vision screening, the vibe felt like a rock concert. The film just had its US release premiere at the IFC Center in NYC last week, which was extended, and premieres in LA this weekend, and in Toronto at the beginning of April.
The best part for me has been this international reception where people come up to us and are like ‘what the %*@# are you Canadians doing up there?’ and they say it with genuine reverence and awe. What a compliment. That’s exciting in this time where Canadians are taking ownership of our sovereignty. I do see a link there. We’re making bold moves in our indie space.
You are also a filmmaker. What can you tell us about your upcoming work as a filmmaker?
Leah: I’m premiering a short I directed called Fine Black Frame at the Treefort Music Fest’s Filmfort Festival this week. Fine Black Frame is a one-man spoken word and movement piece I made with my best friend and collaborator Thomas Antony Olajide, who wrote and stars in it. It’s a kinetic self-portrait exploring Blackness, queerness, and masculinity, and we’re also collaborating on a micro-feature project with a bunch of the same collaborators from that project, and rad peers-of-old-and-new that we’re looking to shoot this fall.
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Tickets and showtimes for Dead Lover can be found here