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Rachel Sennott
If you’ve been paying attention to Film Twitter, then perhaps you’ve heard some word-of-mouth buzz about Shiva Baby, an independent comedy that released on video-on-demand last Friday.
Written and directed by 26-year-old Emma Seligman—based on a short film Seligman made her senior year of college—Shiva Baby has received near-universal praise from critics, and currently boasts a 97 percent fresh rating on the review aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes.
This reporter is here to tell you that you should listen to the buzz: This comedy combines a sitcom premise with a horror movie score, and the result is a biting, suspenseful, and hilariously real portrait of a college senior attending a shiva with her family. Beyond that, the cast is spot-on: Star Rachel Sennott delivers a masterclass of anxiety and frustration, as her day only gets worse and worse, and her on-screen father is played by the always-hilarious Fred Melamed.
Read on to find out where to watch Shiva Baby, and then hurry up and watch this excellent film.
WHAT IS THE SHIVA BABY RELEASE DATE? IS SHIVA BABY ON STREAMING?
Good news: Shiva Baby is currently available to watch on streaming! The feature film first premiered online at the 2020 South by Southwest film festival last March, and the film opened on demand and in select theaters on April 2, 2021.
WHERE TO WATCH SHIVA BABY:
You can buy or rent Shiva Baby on video-on-demand on platforms like YouTube, Vudu, Google Play, iTunes, Prime Video, and more. On most platforms, it cost $6.99 to rent, or $14.99 to buy. If you rent the film, you will have 48 hours to watch and rewatch it after you hit play. If you buy it, you can watch and rewatch it as many times as you like, for as long as you like.
If you feel comfortable doing so, you may also be able to see Shiva Baby in theaters, depending on where you live. Check your local listings to see if Shiva Baby is playing near you.
WHAT IS SHIVA BABY ABOUT?
Shiva Baby is about a Jewish, bisexual college senior named Danielle (Rachel Sennott) who attends a shiva with her family to mourn a family member she barely knows. (Before entering the house, she urgently asks her mother, “Who died!?”) Instead of grieving, Danielle is much more concerned with juggling her family, her ex-girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon), and, to her shock, her sugar daddy Max (Danny Deferrari), who turns out to be a colleague of Danielle’s father (Fred Melamed). Worse, it turns out Max is married, and he’s brought along his gorgeous blonde wife (Dianna Agron) and their bouncing new baby. Uh-oh.
IS SHIVA BABY A SHORT FILM?
Shiva Baby is a feature-length film but is an expansion of writer/director Seligman’s 2018 short film of the same title, which she made as her senior thesis project at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. If you’re interested in watching the Shiva Baby short film, it is currently still streaming on Vimeo.
IS SHIVA BABY ON NETFLIX?
No, sorry. Currently, the only way to watch Shiva Baby on streaming is to buy or rent the film. But on most digital platforms, Shiva Baby is only $6.99 to rent or $14.99 to buy. It’s a small price to pay to see a good movie, and to support an up-and-coming independent filmmaker, right?
