SUFF 2026 interview: Nicole Bazuin and Andrea Werhun on Modern Whore

September 5, 2026

Directed by Nicole Bazuin and starring Andrea Werhun, Modern Whore is a hybrid documentary film based on Andrea’s 2018 memoir outlining her time as a sex worker turned writer turned filmmaker. Ahead of its screening at Sydney Underground Film Festival, Addy Fong speaks to Nicole and Andrea about filmmaking, intimacy, and the female experience where it is, ‘not about the men.’

Firstly, I wanted to ask how your relationship as a filmmaking team came about.

NICOLE: Our relationship as a filmmaking team grew out of our existing friendship. We did a book together, which is Andrea’s memoir Modern Whore. It’s her stories paired with my photography. We originally published that in 2018 and subsequently did an expanded edition with Penguin Random House in 2022. Then Andrea and I started to collaborate on films as well. They are films that tell her story. So, we did the Modern Whore short film in 2020. It played at the Sydney Underground Film Festival and won an award for Best Short Documentary. We knew we wanted to make a full-length film. We’re so excited to have done that and to be bringing that to Sydney Underground as well.

I’m curious about Canada’s filmmaking process because a lot of filmmakers make shorts that become features. Was that the reason you made the feature, or was it always the plan? A memoir is such a big book, it’s hard to cut it down. Can you speak about adapting that source material so that more people know Andrea’s story, her experience, your experience?

NICOLE: Short filmmaking was an excellent bridge to this feature. It allowed both Andrea and I to experiment and grow as artists. I think that was instrumental when it came to figuring out what we wanted to do with a feature length adaptation. I’m also a believer in making projects with the resources you have. What was available to us at that stage was [creating] a short film, so we did that first. We’ve been trying to just grow and expand the scope of our projects with each new one we make.

ANDREA: And to add to that, Nicole and I are multidisciplinary artists. So even in the beginning, before we made the book, we weren’t sure what form the storytelling that we wanted to do would take. It took a while to settle even on a memoir art book. We thought maybe it could be a graphic novel, a magazine. There were lots of considerations including my desire for anonymity at first that led us down a literary path. Also, because self-publishing and inevitably working with a small art book publisher in Toronto was the most accessible way for us to create a story, a product, and a piece of art that played to our strengths. After we made the book, it was like, okay, well, what’s next? What can we make now? I’m a writer, performer, Nicole is a visual artist, illustrator, genius, director. So, we may as well just keep playing and seeing what we can make.

The film is considered this cool hybrid documentary. It’s a very creative approach to storytelling on a subject that is quite socially taboo. Nicole, did you do the animation?

NICOLE: We had an animator who created those animations, and his name is Dylan Glynn.

Mixed storytelling approaches in documentaries seems to be a way to present viewers with a more palatable presentation of socially taboo topics like sex work, which isn’t often spoken about candidly. Was that a consideration, as filmmakers, providing variety to ensure audiences keep engaged? Modern Whore provides so many different perspectives on the topic. I found it quite refreshing.

NICOLE: I’m really glad the film came across as being lively and something that could allow the subject matter to feel approached in a way that drew you in or made you able to explore it as an audience member. I think it’s twofold because, like Andrea said, she and I are both so interdisciplinary. We’re both bursting with so much creative energy that I like us to be able to use whatever tools are available and feel right to the story. I think that that means if you want to tell a story or make a documentary that’s meant to break the mold, then you have to break the mold in how that story is told and approached. I think its aim is to pull from both documentary and narrative formats to allow Andrea to be herself in interviews and speak candidly about her experiences. [This helps] bring in other voices from her life to tell her story, her experiences, and have her guide us as a performer through these various stories. I think that provided a lot of world building opportunities as well. The animations, the graphics, all these things hopefully contribute to a very lively, engaging version of her experience that speaks to the vibe that we wanted, which is that we can show light in the dark. Ultimately there’s a sense of artistry, there’s a sense of humour and human touches in the filmmaking and [hopefully] our personalities come across.

ANDREA: Yeah, I think accessibility into the content has always been a goal from the beginning, to create a candy-coated package that packs a punch when it comes to sex worker rights and dignity. In previous iterations, for example, we’ve seen the project as a type of Trojan horse, let’s say a ‘Trojan Whore’ in that you might see Modern Whore and think you’re going to get something and then you get something else. You might think it’s going to be salacious. It is salacious, but it also has heart. And that’s important to us. This is not because we’re not being gratuitous. We’re not voyeurs. This is my story. I’m a human being. I like to share my humanity. That includes, you know, showing different sides of myself and my experience, but also ensuring that the film has multiple perspectives so there’s various entry points in understanding our humanity.

I really like that. One question I had about humanity was the vulnerability of Andrea’s story and experience whilst filming. Performing, acting, intimacy, is such a vulnerable thing. Can you talk about the use of an intimacy coordinator on set? How was that experience?

NICOLE: From my side, from a director’s standpoint, having the intimacy coordinator on this film was phenomenal. We joked that Anisa Tejpar, our intimacy coordinator, was the hardest working one in show business. Once you looked at how many scenes involved sexuality in some way and would benefit from professional involvement, there were quite a few, to have someone to specialize in that and bring so much care and thoughtfulness into not only helping me achieve what I needed in terms of the film storytelling, [it] ensured all of our actors had very helpful rehearsals leading up to the shoot. To have her support on set and ensure their comfort and safety was paramount to what Andrea, and I wanted to achieve, not only as filmmakers, but as producers on the film as well.

ANDREA: Yeah, having Anisa Tejpar on board from the beginning was paramount to us. Obviously, I am not only vulnerable in the sense that I’m performing a physical manifestation of my body, my sexuality on screen, but I’m also emotionally vulnerable in the film. That’s why in addition to the intimacy coordinator, we also had a sex worker informed trauma counsellor who was also present on days where not only I was talking about sex work, but all of my peers who were in the film talking about sex work and on days I was performing scenes in which I experienced trauma that really happened to me. This is not something that happens in a lot of documentaries. You get to reenact your own lived experiences. Thankfully on those days, not only was Jen Porter there for me to support me through those reenactments, but she was also there for everybody else on set who needed to talk to someone to process what they might be experiencing, watching me reenact my own trauma, because we know how that works. So it was a part of set safety to have someone with that level of experience to support not only me, but everybody on set, because that’s a tough day in the workplace to have to go to work and see that kind of thing, for me to live that kind of thing. So that was important in addition to the intimacy coordinator. We also had Tina Eldridge who is a sex worker, social worker, community worker, provide training to the entire crew before we started shooting to ensure there was sensitivity around sex worker issues, what are inappropriate, appropriate ways to talk about sex work and interact with the subject matter so that every single one of us felt safe on set. We did everything that we could to ensure that this was going to be the safest workplace possible, and I think that groundwork is visible in the film.

You talked about ensuring that crew were trained for what was appropriate. Did it impact who you choose to be on your crew? Being both female filmmakers, I’m curious about aspects of framing this film in relation to the male and female gaze. As we’re all aware, the male gaze has such a strong prevalence in cinema and in how we present ourselves as women and social ideas of beauty. I was curious if your film helps shift our perspective to perhaps a more feminist lens?

NICOLE: I think it is part of a very exciting shift of having more diverse storytellers than ever. Tell stories with new perspectives and with authentic perspectives that have not yet been seen. It’s incredibly exciting and it’s incredibly vital. I feel very proud that we are a woman-led team, Andrea and I, to work together and approach this from a friendship that grew into art making and that this can be a project that still explores beauty and has some inspiration from a tradition of Playboy photography. But it’s reimagined, it’s done in a way that is very particular to us and our own identities as artists and our own collaboration, which is rooted in so much mutual respect and excitement for this new frontier of storytelling. It’s been amazing to bring a team of people into the fold that have been so incredible in supporting that vision. I will highlight our cinematographer, Nina Djacic, who also shot our other two short films. We’re working with collaborators we have a history of creating with, a comfort level, a grounded ness in place [that] we can achieve so much. To have a team of three women producing, ourselves and our producer, Lauren Grant, there’s an incredible feeling to come together and tell this story. I’m so proud of the entire team we brought together and thankful to have them be part of this and bring all their talents and experiences to it.

ANDREA: Modern Whore is not about the men.

YES! Oh Sorry, Ah.

ANDREA: [laughs] Modern Whore is innovative and new and bright in part because it decentres men from the narrative. Yes, we go through various appointments, but we have men like a revolving door. I think part of what we’re doing deliberately in some ways is objectifying the client to some extent. We don’t need to know their name. We don’t need to know anything about them. They’re just there, they give me the money, and then they leave. Let’s talk to my friends. Let’s talk to my mom. Let’s talk to my boyfriend. Let’s talk about anything other than the men. It is not interesting, I think, especially in sex worker filmmaking. When you have films continuously made by people who are not sex workers, who don’t have sex workers making decisions on sets, who are not writers or producers or performers in these films, I think you see a fundamental male gaze there. You see a voyeuristic gaze. You see what people on the outside think sex work is, they think it’s all about the men. They think it’s all about violence and they think it’s all about victimhood. That’s why Modern Whore is so different. It’s genuinely from my perspective and we include the voices of other people in the industry to ensure that the viewer has an understanding that this is a very vast industry where people have extraordinarily different experiences. And yet we can all come together and agree that we are human beings, worthy of respect and dignity and equal rights and access to justice and workplace health and safety. It has nothing to do with the men. Who cares? We don’t care about them. I think when you lead with humanity, you lead with humour. Fundamentally, humour is how we survive. We do a lot of laughing together. When you are someone who’s only consumed sex work from a TV, film and news perspective, you would never know we have lots of laughs. You would never understand how much complexity and nuance there is to every single individual sex worker’s life, because all people know is that we are victims and that we get murdered. Right? That’s why it was so important, obviously Nicole’s not a sex worker, our producer, Lauren’s not a sex worker, Nina’s not a sex worker, but these are women. There’s a shared experience many civilian women have in being objectified in understanding what it’s like to have your human value reduced to what you look like. That is a shared experience with sex workers. I think we have a lot more in common than we don’t. For that reason, I think this team really brought this [film] to life in the best, fullest way possible, in a way that, no offense to male producers, couldn’t.

I love the passion that I’m hearing in your voice. You mentioned in the film, how you as a white cisgender female are treated differently to your friends who are trans, who are of a different ethnicity. You speak to your mum who is a Christian. That kind of diversity I think really is beautiful because it shows the firstly, there’s trauma through our different experiences, not just sex work, but I guess just our lived experiences as women. There’s stuff that I’ve gone through with men, not as intense as your experiences, that I look back on and I’m like, whoa, that dude was crazy. What was I thinking? Why was I hiding underneath the table crying? But also, we have humour as a way of coping. We have conversations that show different views, perspectives, approaches. Modern Whore uses humour to tie the story together. I’m Christian, I go to church, so I was curious about your mum who is religious. Has there been any backlash from religious groups, conservative groups, about your film?

ANDREA: Okay, well, I’ll say very quickly. I think there are two types of Christians, the ones that believe that only God can judge others and the types that believe it is their job to judge people. My mom, I’m very grateful to say, believes that it is only God who can judge her daughter. So she is, it’s not like she was supportive from the get-go, she was horrified from the get-go. But over time and through many conversations and lots of processing, she was able to come to a place where she doesn’t condone my labour, but she believes I deserve labour rights. She believes I deserve to be safe at work. She may not like how I make my money, but she thinks I should have workplace health and safety. As far as the wider reaction from the religious community, I haven’t heard any. I can’t say there’s been a backlash, so that’s good. There’s still time for that.

NICOLE: I think you nailed it. But you know, Modern Whore is meant to bring us all together. So, let’s have a great time at the Sydney Underground Film Festival. It’s so fun. See you at SUFF. Modern Whore for everyone. We don’t discriminate.

Modern Whore Plays at the Sydney Underground Film Festival on Saturday 12^th of September. For tickets and info go here: SUFF – MODERN WHORE

Interview by Addy Fong.