On today’s daily NYFF61 podcast, director Annie Baker and lead actresses Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler discuss Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Baker’s superb debut feature Janet Planet with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. 

It’s 1991 in rural Western Massachusetts, the summer before Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) starts sixth grade, and she is spending the lazy months with her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), in their home in the woods. As the months drift by, the bespectacled, taciturn girl, fiercely observant, watches Janet and three enigmatic adults who drift in and out of their lives, whether romantic interests or reconnected friends. This work of surreal tranquility moves at a different, lost pace of life, and introduces Ziegler as an incredible new talent. An A24 release.

Listen to the Q&A featuring Baker, Nicholson, and Ziegler as they discuss watching the film for the first time, resisting conventions, and the origins of Janet Planet.