Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Aubrey Plaza Takes Tense Thriller Emily the Criminal to New Heights

25/01/2022

By Vanessa Zimmer

If you haven't seen Aubrey Plaza since she played the bored and snarky April Ludgate in television's Parks and Recreation - surprise!

In the lead role of the tense thriller Emily the Criminal - written and directed by John Patton Ford and premiering Monday at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival - Plaza plays a vulnerable young woman with a tough core. Or maybe it's the other way around. In any case, she projects a hefty amount of nerviness, with just a bit of nerves.

Emily is a talented artist who must stoop to contract work delivering food while her friend from art school, Liz, makes 11-day work trips to Portugal for photo shoots. In part because of a relatively minor criminal record, Emily is unable to find full-time work that will allow her to pay off a student debt that has grown to $70,000 (even though she had to abandon school before graduating).

Emily essentially stumbles onto a dummy shopping network in Los Angeles, where she can make $200 or more for an hour's work buying flat-screen TVs and the like with fake credit cards and IDs provided by a middleman. The middleman, of course, reaps high dollars from their resale.

The pace of the film is deliberately relentless, perhaps 75% of the action captured with a handheld camera, said director of photography Jeff Bierman in the post-premiere Q&A - as Emily charges full-octane through her difficulties.

You feel like you're walking with Emily through every part of it, said Theo Rossi, who plays that sympathetic middleman and love interest. He appreciates working opposite Plaza: She goes for it through every take.

Emily tries to walk away from dummy shopping once, twice, three times, while attempting to land a job that operates within the law. But she is frustrated at every turn, growing harder, angrier, and more desperate. Plaza so genuinely inhabits this complex Emily that even as Emily sinks deeper and deeper into a world of crime and violence, we're rooting for her all the way.
LINK: https://www.sundance.org/blogs/aubrey-plaza-takes-tense-thriller-emily...
See more stories from sundance

North America Stories

01/06/2026

CBS Sports UEFA Champions League Today Studio Show Heads to Budapest for Final as Transcontinental Popularity Grows

In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...

01/06/2026

AudioShake Launches End-to-End Copyright Compliance System for Mixed-Media Audio

Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music AudioShake has introdu...

01/06/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Stats Perform's Charles Kaplan on 30 Years of Opta, a Busy Summer of Soccer, What's Next

The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...

01/06/2026

ASG Advances Joe Marchitto to Western Regional CTO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

Scripps Stations Go Dark on DirecTV

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

MARSHALL ELECTRONICS POWERS SEAMLESS AV EXPERIENCES WITH...

Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...

01/06/2026

Adobe Announces Concept to Vector

Adobe Announces Concept to Vector Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026 0 Comments One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...

01/06/2026

Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio

Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio Brie Clayton June 1, 2026 0 Comments Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...

01/06/2026

U.S. Broadcasters Ready for Most Complex FIFA World Cup Ever

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

Broadcasters Prepare for Nation's 250th Birthday Bash

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

Broadcasters Reveal What Makes C-Band Alternatives Right for Them

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

IAMT to Offer New Educational Sessions at InfoComm 2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/06/2026

NewsNation Launches New Podcasting Studio and Podcasts

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

31/05/2026

Olivia Prez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona

Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...

31/05/2026

Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Photos From Inside Our Photo Suite

Back to All News Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...

31/05/2026

Taiwan's Industry Titans Turbocharge World's AI Infrastructure Buildout With NVIDIA

Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...

31/05/2026

NVIDIA Factory Operations Blueprint Gives Factories a New AI Brain

As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...

31/05/2026

NVIDIA AI Cloud Ecosystem Expands Worldwide to Meet Global AI Compute Demand

The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...

30/05/2026

NAB Asks FCC to Shift Regulatory Fee Burden to Big Tech, Broadband

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/05/2026

NAB Announces 2026 Board Election Results

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/05/2026

IAB Tech Lab Releases Guidance for Managing AI Crawlers and Bots

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/05/2026

Zero in on one that says yes (and no)

Zero in on one that says yes (and no) Andy Marken May 29, 2026 0 Comments Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos For content creators the most difficu...

29/05/2026

InfoComm 2026: NDI Demos NDI 6.3, Hands-On Presentation About Educational Integrations

With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...

29/05/2026

Bell Media Inks New Long-Term Media Rights Deal for Broadcast, Streaming of the Canadian Football League

Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...

29/05/2026

Spring 2026 TV Survey: Vertical Live Matters. The Bigger Story Is Context

Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format Ring Digital's Sprin...

29/05/2026

Germanys Berliner Ensemble Bolsters Backstage Infrastructure With Riedel Stage Systems

Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...

29/05/2026

InfoComm 2026: Solid State Logic Spotlights TCA Tour, Live V6.2 Software, New SSL Live Trade-in Program

Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...

29/05/2026

Gerald Jerry Pierce, Architect of Modern Digital Cinema, Passes Away at Age 73

Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...

29/05/2026

CBS Sports Becomes New Home of Barclays Women's Super League Thorough 2029-2030

Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...

29/05/2026

Calrec Scales ImPulseV to Empower Broadcasters With Greater Choice in Virtualized Workflows

Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...

29/05/2026

Switzerlands Canal Alpha Streamlines Playout to Delivery With Harmonic

Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...

29/05/2026

InfoComm 2026: PTZOptics Showcases Intelligent Video Ecosystem

PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...

29/05/2026

Arizona's Family Sports Debuts Direct-to-Consumer Streaming App

Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...

29/05/2026

DAZN Brings The Canadian Football Leagues Saturday Night Football to the Masses in New Media Rights Deal

Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...

29/05/2026

Comcast Business Supports Advanced Technology Infrastructure at Levi's Stadium for Fan Experience, Venue Operations

Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...

29/05/2026

College Sports-Production Community Gathers in Atlanta for 2026 SVG College Summit

In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...

29/05/2026

TBT Reaches Two-Year Extension With FOX Sports for New-Look $2 Million Tournament

The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...

29/05/2026

Roku Expands Premium Subscriptions Experience with FOX One

Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...

29/05/2026

CBS Sports UEFA Champions League Today Studio Show Heads Budapest for Final as Transcontinental Popularity Grows

In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...

29/05/2026

Ratings Roundup: NBA, NHL Playoffs and Indy 500 Photo Finish Power a Record-Setting Week

Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...

29/05/2026

Remembering Gerald Jerry Pierce, Architect of Modern Digital Cinema

Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...

29/05/2026

Roku Unveils Redesigned TV Home Screen

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/05/2026

Sinclair and AMP Sports to Launch Style of Play' Podcast

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/05/2026

TV Pharma Ads Are Getting Longer, VAB Says

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/05/2026

Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality

Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality Kate Luvis May 29, 2026 0 Comments Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...

29/05/2026

Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio

Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio Brie Clayton May 29, 2026 0 Comments Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...

29/05/2026

FCC Reminds Broadcasters of Their Public Interest Obligations

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/05/2026

Roku Unveils New TV Home Screen

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/05/2026

Sinclair and AMP Sports Announce New 'Style of Play' Podcast

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...