Ren is riddled with guilt when her Mom dies suddenly in a car accident, convinced their recent fight was the reason her mom died. The eerily zen-inspired funeral home shamelessly upsells the costs of a funeral. Sorry For Your Cost is the story of a family coming to terms with the predatory nature of the funeral industry, and ultimately finding solace in their own rituals.

Director Biography - Rosie Choo Pidcock

Rosie is a biracial Chinese Canadian writer and director who grew up on the northern shores of the Sto:lo (Fraser River) in South Vancouver, Canada. Her award-winning debut short film Esther & Sai, a portrait of the friendship between two immigrant nursing students in the 1970s, received distribution on Air Canada and is currently in series development with the support of the Canada Media Fund, Reelworld and the TIFF Series Accelerator.

Rosie spent five years living between Beijing and Shanghai while also exploring her ancestral roots in Fujian Province. This experience not only sharpened her powers of observation, but also ignited a passion for cross-cultural storytelling. She counts Lulu Wang, Edward Yang and Hirokazu Kore-eda among her favourite directors for their pairing of cinematic visuals with emotional intimacy and the absurdity of everyday life. When she’s not making films, she is testing out a new move in her heels dance class, browsing a local thrift store or scouring the shelves at the nearest public library.

Director Statement

Sorry For Your Cost was inspired by an amalgamation of three personal experiences:

Planning my Mom's funeral in 2017.

I was literally pitched an oil painting replica, a $500 urn and an obituary writing service. This caused me to reflect on the extreme unaffordability of the whole funeral process. Upon further research, I discovered that in 2021 approximately 10,000 bodies went unclaimed in the USA in large part due to the cost of funerals and burial (Source: Washington Post). Death is a big business, so I decided to extend this premise into an absurd comedy drama by asking "What if an IKEA-like corporation ran a zen-inspired funeral home franchise?”

Actually participating in a balloon release at a funeral in 2021.

My first thought was "this is terrible for the environment" followed immediately by "this is actually kind of nice". This tension fascinated me, and it got me thinking about the lack of death rituals in Western culture that enable a true feeling of collective release.

A Facebook post in a group titled "Vancouver Buy and Sell Quick" where someone was selling a grave plot for $40,000.

The comments section was relentless, chiming in with barbs like "looks like I can't afford to live OR die in Vancouver". This really struck a chord. As I engage in an ongoing process of decolonization, I want to highlight how even death comes back to occupation of land and the financial privilege of dying gracefully.

The process of alchemizing these experiences into a film grew my directional capabilities immensely. Shooting on Cooke anamorphic lenses allowed my DP Belen Garcia and I to achieve the Wes Anderson-esque hyper-symmetry we were aiming for in the funeral home.. These same lenses allowed us to capture the breadth of the textured clutter in the Zhang family home, and more importantly the breadth of their bond as a playful and loving unit.

Creating and shooting two story worlds across two timelines challenged my sense of tone, transition and emotional throughline. My greatest allies in overcoming this challenge were my post-production teammates – the score and sound design, particularly in Dying+, are both cheeky and playful. This embodies my approach to a story about devastating loss, and I hope audiences find permission to be similarly playful even when faced with losing a loved one – finding the humour and levity in it, as opposed to solely darkness and tragedy.

Lastly, this film was a healing process for my lifelong journey in grief.Being able to create comedy out of a personally tragic event is an important milestone. Ironically, we ended up shooting the funeral sequences in the same graveyard where my Mom is buried. – a pure coincidence initiated by our location manager. Art should never cease to imitate life, and this very phenomenon is the reason I continue to make films.

I hope you enjoy Sorry For Your Cost!