Emma Laird Delivers SXSW’s Standout Performance in Satisfaction (Interview with Emma Laird and Director Alex Burunova)

Satisfaction at SXSW

Some films announce themselves loudly; others seep under your skin and remain there. Satisfaction is the latter: a quietly powerful film that lingers long after the credits. At the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival I spoke with Emma Laird and director Alex Burunova about a story that feels both intimate and inevitable.

Though it played modestly at the festival, Satisfaction already feels destined to grow in reputation. That momentum comes first and foremost from Laird’s performance as Lola, a British musician whose relationship fractures in the silent spaces between conversations. Laird’s work is restrained but electric — an acting choice that relies on stillness, subtle gestures, and charged pauses instead of obvious dramatics.

Emma is shooting through the sky. It might not be in the observable universe yet, but she’s a comet. – Director Alex Burunova on Emma Laird.

For Burunova, the film was a long, careful process of translation: private experience converted into cinema. Originally conceived as a stage play, Satisfaction evolved over a decade into its current form through more than a hundred drafts and hundreds of watercolor storyboards. The result is a piece that feels scrupulously composed yet lived-in, where visual precision gives the actors room to breathe and discover.

Ultimately the film is anchored by Laird. Her performance doesn’t call for attention so much as it makes the world revolve around her interior life. In conversation at SXSW, it was clear the role left an imprint on Laird, just as her portrayal leaves an impression on viewers.

(read my full review of Satisfaction)

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The Production of Satisfaction

For director Alex Burunova, Satisfaction was an act of reclamation. What began as a theatrical piece gradually revealed itself as a personal chronicle; Burunova adapted and reshaped those moments into a cinematic language she could inhabit and interrogate. She describes the journey as a decade-long refinement that prioritized emotional clarity and visual coherence.

Burunova’s creative process relied heavily on visual preparation: pages of watercolor storyboards that informed framing, tone, and the film’s emotional architecture. That visual rigor supports an unobtrusive directorial method on set — one that encouraged openness and exploration rather than rigid blocking.

There was a freedom in how Alex shot. It was like, “Let’s roll the cameras and see what happens.” I don’t know how she did it, but it really allowed the actors to feel free, not like, “Okay, action,” then “Cut.” – Emma Laird on Director Alex Burunova

Shot largely on location in Greece, the landscape becomes an emotional extension of Lola’s interior. Sunlit horizons and expansive architecture contrast with the claustrophobia of Lola’s silence. Working with cinematographer Máté Herbai, Burunova built a visual palette that feels intimate and distant at once — a style that holds the audience close to Lola without letting them forget the film’s prevailing unease.

Finding Lola was a central challenge. The role required an actor who could sustain the camera’s attention through subtlety rather than exposition. Producer Kyle Stroud recommended Emma Laird after viewing dailies from her work in The Brutalist; Burunova saw hours of takes and instantly recognized a rare, precise quality. She offered the part without an audition.

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Collaboration Between Actor and Director

For Emma Laird, inhabiting Lola meant stepping into a character whose conflicts are primarily interior: a woman negotiating the erosion of intimacy and agency. On first reading, Laird responded viscerally to the script — she broke down while reading the pivotal sequence and recognized that this story demanded to be told.

Burunova nurtured those instincts by staging life into the rehearsal process: Laird and co-star Fionn Whitehead (Philip) lived together briefly before cameras rolled so their relationship had a lived-in weight. Laird also prepared musically, taking months of piano lessons to make Lola’s musicianship feel authentic.

Burunova intentionally kept the set fluid to capture spontaneous truth. She often let scenes play out without frequent cuts, believing that continuous performance yields more honest moments. Laird credits this freedom with allowing her to stop performing and simply be, creating a naturalism that intensifies the film’s tension and realism.

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Emma’s Performance and Rising Star Quality

Emma Laird as Audrey in The Brutalist | IMDb
With Satisfaction, Emma Laird proves she is more than an emerging talent: she is an actor ready for leading work. Her earlier role in The Brutalist signaled a promise; here she fulfills it with a performance that is both controlled and deeply felt.

Laird’s Lola is built on restraint: micro-expressions, charged silences, and the physics of an internal life. The film subverts conventional gendered portrayals of power, inviting a deeper look at how control operates in intimate relationships. Lola’s arc becomes, in part, a reclamation — a quiet reclaiming of agency that Laird renders with precision.

“So much of what you see on screen is real,” Laird said, acknowledging how much of her own frustration informed the role. That honesty gives the film its emotional weight and signals Laird’s readiness for larger, more demanding roles.

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The Visual Language of Satisfaction and ‘The Scene’

Burunova and Herbai shaped Satisfaction around the power of stillness. Framing, angle, and space become character devices: Lola is frequently shot from above or placed low in the frame to suggest containment, while Philip often occupies a dominant perspective. When Elena (Zar Amir) appears, her commanding presence changes those dynamics and gestures toward Lola’s possible resurgence.

The visual language of the film was very important to me because I’m an artist, too; I paint and went to art school. I’d been painting storyboards for the film for five years—hundreds and hundreds of stills. – Alex Burunova on the visual language of Satisfaction

Everything converges on a single, defining moment: an uninterrupted take held on Lola’s face. Burunova wrote it simply and precisely — a still frame that denies relief. The camera stays, the soundtrack drops away, and the audience is forced into Lola’s silence. Midori Hirano’s score elsewhere in the film is jagged and unsettled, but here the absence of music makes the scene even more punishing. Laird described the experience of performing it as lasting longer than expected; the unblinking duration is part of its potency.

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What’s Next for Emma Laird and Alex Burunova?

Satisfaction at SXSW is notable for its haunting story, precise cinematography, and a career-defining performance from Emma Laird. Both Laird and Burunova appear poised for continued attention.

Laird confirmed she has additional projects in development and will appear alongside major actors in a number of high-profile productions already announced, including roles in films and series that position her among established performers. Publicly announced projects list collaborations with notable actors and directors, and she will also feature in an upcoming Apple TV+ series, Neuromancer.

Burunova’s next project, Sunrise Over the Himalayas, is described as a Buddhist dramedy focused on female empowerment and family dynamics, again drawing on personal experience. She also has a third film in pre-production set in Japan.

If Satisfaction is any indication, both Alex Burunova and Emma Laird are filmmakers whose work will remain conversation-worthy for years to come.

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