Serious People
Director(s): Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Film description: A successful music video director and expectant father hires a lookalike to take on his professional duties while he attends to a conflicting work opportunity and his wife’s due date.
Screening after: Retreat
ERIC SAYS For many of us, having to choose between accepting a commission to direct a Drake music video or being present for the birth of your child due on the same day as the proposed shoot would be a no-brainer (sorry, Aubrey!). But Serious People asks: why not do both? With great formal ingenuity and self-satirizing humor, co-director star Pasqual Gutierrez offers us a probably-only-slightly-exaggerated peek behind the curtain of the life of an in-demand hip-hop music-video director.
As one half of the real-life directing duo Cliqua, Gutierrez certainly knows a thing or two about glitz, glamour, and ego, and the skewering they all get from Serious People cuts all the deeper as a result. Corporate-speak on zooms, celebrity sidekicks turned business managers, film bros, and entourages all get their comeuppance here—but since Gutierrez reserves his sharpest barbs for himself and his own progression, it never feels like punching down. Recalling films as different as Putney Swope, Being John Malkovich, and I’m Still Here—as well as pivotal episodes of The Rehearsal and Atlanta—Serious People is a whip-smart comedy constructed from the building blocks of hybrid documentary. (Eric Allen Hatch)
Writer(s): Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Producer(s): Ryan Hahn, Laurel Thomson, Teddy Lee, Jerad Anderson, Natasha Atalla Seubert
Editor(s): Nick Rondeau
Cinematographer(s): Nick Bupp, Neema Sadeghi
Country of origin: USA
Principal cast: Pasqual Gutierrez, Christine Yuan, Miguel Huerta, Raul Sanchez
Language: English
Year: 2025
Duration: 84 min
Premiere status: Maryland Premiere
