Amalia Ulman Breaks the Rules With “Magic Farm”

By Bailey Pennick

As writer-director Amalia Ulman makes her way to the podium at the Library Center Theatre to introduce her latest feature, Magic Farm, to the world premiere crowd, she actually wants to talk about her previous feature instead. “Thank you to Sundance for giving me a chance to show my first film when I had nothing,” Ulman says. Her debut, El Planeta, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which was exclusively online due to the pandemic. “That moment kick-started a career,” she recalls. Now she’s an alum with a vision of filmmaking all her own and a packed theater under her belt.

From the minute it starts you’re overwhelmed with the vibrancy and the all-around attitude of Magic Farm. A picture-perfect Chloë Sevigny is addressing the camera directly as she shoots promos for her Vice-style travel show. Even as the trend-chasing trip to Argentina goes sideways because the crew (featuring Simon Rex, Alex Wolff, and Ulman, herself) ended up in the wrong place without a subject to shoot, the attitude and interpersonal drama is unique. It’s bright, the music is bass-filled and infectious, and the clothes are to die for — Magic Farm looks unlike any movie you’ve ever seen. “I see this as a rom-com shot as a skateboarding video,” Ulman says, cracking open the familiar-yet-strange quality of the fish-eye lenses, knockoff GoPros attached to neighborhood dogs, and behind-the-scenes vibe of her film.

One of the best parts about skate movies is making them with your friends, and, in that same vein, Ulman met some of her closest collaborators on the internet. “Amalia had reached out to me [because] she liked something that I made on Instagram,” says Joe Apollonio (My Animal, 2023 Sundance Film Festival), who plays the confident Justin in the film, during the post-premiere discussion. “Then she was like, ‘I want to talk to you about this movie that I’m thinking about making,’ so I was attached from the get-go. As I saw her vision come to life I was like wow [because] her mind is very unconventional and inherently artistic.”

There’s something dreamlike in the way Magic Farm skirts all normal conventions of filmmaking, which was a major highlight to Wolff (Hereditary, 2018 Sundance Film Festival). “I just want to say, I’ve done a lot of things and I’ve worked for a long time, and I’ve never seen someone take these kinds of risks with the camera,” he says directly to Ulman down the Q&A line. Then as she blushes, he turns to the crowd to really hammer his point home. “I remember one day [she set up a shot with me] and then I didn’t see a camera. Then a dog just ran up to me and it was filming me! I just thought that’s like the coolest thing in the world, and I think sometimes we can get bogged down by worrying about what’s in vogue or… what are the rules [of filmmaking.] Amalia was all just about shattering that and, at every turn, doing something original. It was really amazing to see that and something I’ve never experienced.”