From the Field: Sorry, Baby

A Review of Sorry, Baby + Hearing from Eva Victor at the Chicago Critics Film Festival

Author

Farouk Kannout
May 06, 2025

❝

“Sometimes bad stuff just happens... It's just like that sometimes.”

Poster for Sorry, Baby (2025) dir. Eva Victor

Every once in a while you walk out of a theater and just know that you've witnessed something absolutely tremendous. That's how I felt after watching Sorry, Baby at this year's Chicago Critics Film Festival, where the film received a standing ovation from the packed theater. First time writer-director and star of Sorry, Baby Eva Victor has created a stunning picture that is aching, intimate, and beautifully honest while finding humor in some of the most tragic of places.

The film tells the story of Agnes (Eva Victor). Something bad happened to her, something that's difficult to openly say. She's stuck, permanently altered by the bad thing, but life keeps going. Her friends have lives and they keep moving forward even as she feels like she can't imagine a future for herself. Sorry, Baby is a film about healing and how you find those glimmers of hope that you will be able to keep going.

“The reason I wrote the movie is because I wanted to talk about the time after, when you're trying to heal but you're stuck and it's hard and everyone starts looking away. You can't move forward because everything is just about getting through the day. I really didn't want to write a film about violence and I didn't want the violence in the film. I think part of that was trying to write a film for the person who needed this film and didn't have it. A lot of the decisions I was making were for that person.”

Eva Victor during a Q&A

While the film is about trauma and healing, it's also about besties, and the value of having a truly good friend. For Agnes, that's Lydie (Naomi Ackie). Victor and Ackie play off each other beautifully, sharing an intimacy that really makes you believe they've been best friends for years. Lucas Hedges also plays a wonderfully charming though oblivious Gavin. It is in these intimate moments with the characters that Sorry, Baby will have you laughing and will also leave you shattered. Eva Victor's artistic voice is distinctly found in these quiet conversations where Agnes's aches are laid bare in ways that feel poetically true to life while finding pockets of humor amidst despair.

One scene that has continued to stay with me is the midpoint of the film, where Agnes sits in a bathtub despondent and relaying what just happened to her to Lydie, who helps her process the trauma. Sometimes I wonder about what it looks like to be there for those you love when they really need it, and the fear that when that time comes that you might not know how to do it “right”. What makes this scene and so many others in Sorry, Baby so meaningful is not just how rare it is to see this subject matter explored on film in this way, but the way it also offers a hopeful guide for what it might look like to both begin the healing process yourself and to be the pillar of support for someone else going through something.

“The film is driving towards telling her friend what happened. The film is about someone sharing that with their friend and the friend holding it very well. The tragedy comes when Agnes is alone but when she has Lydie it can act as a sort of, I don't want to say 'buddy comedy', but a buddy-sad vibe. It's okay that she's so exposed because she's being held correctly.”

Eva Victor during a Q&A

I also loved the film’s nonlinear structure. Hopping back and forth across these four years of Agnes’s life immerses you in her world and parallels the feeling of how any healing journey is always a nonlinear one. Nothing in Sorry, Baby feels forced, a testament to the writing and structure of the film, as well as the performances. To accomplish something like this in a debut as a writer-director is awe-inspiring. The final act of the film is truly something special, with an ending so deeply moving that it will stick with me as far as I can see into the future. I can’t wait to see this film again, and be devastated once more.

Sorry, Baby is scheduled to be released by A24 on June 27th, 2025. Run, don't walk, to the theater to see this when you can. It is such a thoughtful and tender film, and I’m incredibly grateful for it.