Fantasia 2025: Interview With Filmmaker Emma Higgins For ‘Sweetness’

Well friends, it’s the summer so that means one thing – Fantasia! This year, the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada is celebrating its 29th edition and once again showcasing some truly talented genre filmmakers and providing eclectic and explosive viewing material for movie enthusiasts.

My first piece out of Fantasia this year is an interview with Canadian filmmaker Emma Higgins for her movie, Sweetness. Sweetness, starring Justin Chatwin (The Chumscrubber) and Kat Hallett (Women Talking), had its Canadian premiere at Fantasia on July 18, and this selection was one of my favorites out of this year’s fest.

When a chance encounter with her rockstar crush leads 16-year-old Rylee to discover that he’s a dysfunctional drug addict, she takes it upon herself to help him, ultimately forcing her teenage fantasies into reality.

To celebrate the film being at the fest, Emma and I chatted about making the film, casting the lead, horror movies, and more!

PopHorror: I loved Sweetness so much! I watched it yesterday morning and I was like, daaamn. 

Emma Higgins: Good! Oh my god, we screened it last night and I feel like I’m riding the high. Not a lot of people have seen it yet.

PopHorror: I just wanted to say how dare you cast Justin Chatwin as a parent. That makes me feel super old.

Emma Higgins: It is wild. I was watching Josie and the Pussycats the other day, as one does, and I did not know that that was his first role. Have you seen the movie recently?

PopHorror: Not recently, but I saw that on iMDB and it said, “young fan” or something like that.

Emma Higgins: He plays basically a Rylee character. He’s obsessed with the band. He opens the movie being like, “I’m in love with them! I can’t wait until I meet them blah blah blah!” So full circle, now he’s on the father side. I would say he’s got a zaddy energy still. He’s a father but he’s also a daddy. 

PopHorror: What sparked the idea for Sweetness and how did the project come about?

Emma Higgins: I used to be – I still am, although less frequently – a music video director so that’s how I got my start, that’s how I started directing was making videos for bands that I would find. I did tour videos for bands, I worked for a record label and so I was really around the music industry. I started when I was around Rylee’s age too, so I kind of had both sides of the coin there. Getting to see fans and also getting to see the musicians up close and it just felt very natural to write something in that world. Write what you know they say. It started there. I wanted to do something a little bit more sympathetic towards the fans actually, even though we’ve seen a lot of the fan genre but I think this gives something new to it because I think that Rylee’s almost justified in her actions in the film. I love her.

PopHorror: She has good intentions and a lot of heart, if a bit misguided.

Emma Higgins: Yeah! To me she’s the hero and I root for her right until the end. That’s really how it came. It was a long road though. I wrote the first draft of the script 10 years ago and it kicked around and every year I’d pick it up. We were trying to get other films made and this and that and I when I got my producers on board and we wound up getting a little bit of grant funding, it kind of kicked things off. The rest is history.

PopHorror: And now you’re at Fantasia! Congratulations!

Emma Higgins: It’s been amazing! We got the best weather and the best fans. A few of the crew came up so we’re all celebrating this moment because making indie films is very hard so you’ve got to take those wins.

PopHorror: I bet! I love Fantasia and it’s movies like this that make me excited to cover this every year because I get to see such amazing films. I’m excited for more people to get to see this. Kate Hallett as Rylee is superb. Her facial expressions… She has resting bitch face down. What was casting her like?

 

Emma Higgins: I had seen her in Women Talking, which was her first significant role. Sarah Polley had discovered her and put her in Women Talking. I saw her in that, and she was brought to my attention by my producer and then we met. Sarah had given her this amazing review, basically being like, “This young woman is… She’s got it.” She gave her the stamp of approval. So when Sarah Polley gives you that… She’s made some of my favorite films. A woman I respect immensely. That’s all I really needed to hear too. She did not disappoint. She really carries the movie on her shoulders. Like you said, she’s got the bitch face but she’s also got these giant eyeballs that just stare into your soul. She’s five foot nothing and at the same time, terrifying. She’s really nothing like Rylee in real life, which is a testament to her character work in that. She’s like a little musical theater nerd. She’s not this dark, dark soul by any means. I think it was a challenge for her to go to that dark place. We dyed her hair for the film, black dip tips, and the moment we finished filming, she cut all of the black out of her hair and was like, “I need Rylee to go out of my life!” She ended Rylee at that moment. She cut her hair off right into a blunt bob.

PopHorror: Cleansing herself.

Emma Higgins: Yeah, cleansed herself of that character who had so much darkness.

PopHorror: Was there anything that you were adamant about keeping in the film, no matter what?

Emma Higgins: That’s a really good question. Things that I was really adamant about keeping in the film… I was very supported by my producers. I would say, if anything, I forced them into some more cuts than they would have liked because I like a short movie. I just wanted to keep the concert scene or something. It’s kind of drawn out but I think it was really important to see Payton through her lens. My editor and I – Kat Webber – really enjoyed cutting that scene. Like fantasizing through the lens at him was an important part to get it, in a way. I think those are one of the things that I think people get too, but maybe the boys don’t get it as much on why we needed to keep lingering on Herman’s (Tømmeraas) sweaty performance in that moment, but it’s like you have to see him do his thing. I think generally just one of the other things I really had to keep was some of the world building stuff too. That was more in production. I would say I was really fighting for the clothes to be right, the hair to be right. I just really, really needed to make sure that felt real, and I definitely took a lot of influence from my millennial era of teen hood.

PopHorror: I noticed the clothes!

Emma Higgins: I think it’s good that Gen Zs are getting it. I wanted to make something that I think is cool. This is something that I would have enjoyed in high school.

PopHorror: Going back to the concert scenes, I liked that you kept those in there because they’re very impressive. I was really impressed with the level of those scenes based on this being an indie film. It looked and felt like a full concert. It reminded me of being 16 and having someone you admired and got to go see in concert. You could feel their excitement. I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?

Emma Higgins: My favorite scary movie of all time… I think my favorite scary movie is Poltergeist. I would probably put that at my top. I just watch it all the time. It’s so comforting; it’s so beautiful. It’s a perfect movie from front to back.

Thank you so much to Emma for taking the time to speak with us. Sweetness is currently playing festivals.