Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Tenderness and teeth share the screen in Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, a 2023 Quebecois comedy-horror-romance that turns a vampire's crisis of conscience into an unexpectedly gentle coming-of-age story.
What is Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person about?
Sasha comes from a long line of vampires, but she has never managed to kill anyone; every time she closes in on prey, empathy stops her cold. When her frustrated parents cut off the family blood supply to force her hand, Sasha's survival suddenly depends on finding someone willing to die for her. That search leads her to Paul, a bullied, lonely teenager who has already decided he doesn't want to keep living. What begins as a strange, almost transactional arrangement between the two slowly turns into something closer to friendship, as Sasha and Paul spend a single night working through his unfinished business before dawn forces a decision neither of them fully wants to make. Director Ariane Louis-Seize balances dark comedy with real melancholy, using the vampire premise less for scares than as a lens on isolation, connection, and what it means to choose to keep going.
Cast & crew
Sara Montpetit plays Sasha with a deadpan stillness that makes her occasional flashes of warmth land harder, while Félix-Antoine Bénard gives Paul a wounded, dryly funny energy that keeps the film from tipping into melodrama. Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, and Marie Brassard fill out the household and school-life scenes around them.
Context & significance
Shot in Quebec and performed largely in French, the film premiered to strong festival notice and picked up genre-crossover attention for treating vampirism as a metaphor for depression and social withdrawal rather than as straightforward horror. At 90 minutes, it moves briskly without rushing its central relationship.
Where & how to watch
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person can be streamed on K-Time with a free account login, and it includes a Persian dub as well as Persian subtitles for audiences who want to follow it in Farsi. Browsing this page requires no sign-in.