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The filmmaker and critic Dan Sallitt has created some uncompromising, beautiful films over the years; from his feature debut All The Ships At Sea to the Honeymoon, Sallitt has examined the intersection of intimacy and personal identity with thrilling results. His latest film, The Unspeakable Act, which examines the incestuous sexual desire of a young woman named Jackie (Tallie Medel), had its World Premiere at the recent Sarasota Film Festival (where I serve as Director) and will be screened at the upcoming BAMcinemaFest on Sunday, June 24th.

Filmmaker: I wanted to ask you about the issue of desire. The Unspeakable Act seems, for me, to be directly with the issue of “becoming” through desire, the idea of transgressive desire as a marker for living between two social states; adulthood and childhood. Can you discuss this idea of desire and how it shaped the film. What inspired you to tell this story?...

Dan Sallitt's new film, The Unspeakable Act, marks the return of an underseen, major American filmmaker (long esteemed as one of the superior cinema critics writing in English, often here at The Notebook) with a feature which surely ranks among the richest works of the last several years.

Additionally, the new Sallitt film introduces the world to Tallie Medel, a performer whose intellect, emotive capacity, and force of persona place her in the outstanding category of such ascendant figures as Greta Gerwig and Kate Lyn Sheil while outlining a contour of being, a persuasion, that are hers alone.

The Unspeakable Act has its New York premiere as part of BAMcinemaFest on Sunday, June 24th, and its international premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Friday, June 29th, with three screenings at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to follow in July.

The conversation below took place over email across the last two months.