Lukas Steinmaier – Sunday Roast

We had the opportunity to interview Lukas Steinmaier the filmmaker of Sunday Roast. Sunday Roast is an official selection in the 12th annual Utah Film Festival. 

Sunday Roast follows the Wheldon family that sure loves to celebrate their holy Sunday. As for the family tradition, the parents Frank and Molly are preparing a splendid roast chicken. But their daughter Laura knows all too well that this is just their way of settling their differences. As the food is served and the alcohol flows, the seemingly civilized lunch quickly descends into a downright war.

What was the inspiration to make Sunday Roast?

I was basically cleaning out all the remaining debris that the marriage war of my parents left in my head which more or less succeeded. I wanted to draw a distorted picture of what the ritual of the family dinner means nowadays and in that way expose the farce that it is.

From idea to completion, how did this production change?  

Originally intended to be more of a comedic sketch involving the daughters boyfriend who turned into a zombie. My tutors eventually convinced me that the main focus was on the parents rather than just doing a sketch. I think it’s hard to put a label on the end product, as we’ve ended up with a more serious and slightly abstract short film that still doesn’t take itself too serious.

What was the biggest challenge in getting Sunday Roast made? 

Due to Covid pushing back the whole production by a whole year we had a lot of time for a proper pre-production and a long writing process. Nevertheless we still had some problems to tackle, such as recasting the male lead 5 days before shooting or making a dinner scene “covid-safe” which is practically impossible. Overall it was very challenging shooting with such a big amount of food, as everything has to be double and triple prepared, so there is prop food, edible food, painted food and even 3 backup chickens. And the smell is horrible once you shoot with that much meat for a whole day in a closed studio.

What do you think is the most important takeaway from your film?

A lot of things in life are merely rituals that just serve the purpose of making us “feel like normal people” to fulfill the status quo. But where there is order there has to be chaos. Where there is love there is also hate. So the takeaway from my film is  in my opinion that family or any other sort of strong bonds are no fairy tale where love is all you need. It’s a endless battle.

If you could have a do over with Sunday Roast is there anything that you would do differently? If so, what would that be?

I would definitely try to cover more disgusting looking closeups of teeth – make the whole image more rancid overall. Rancid rules.

What do you have next in the works?

I am currently developing a series pitch for a comedy/satire that is trying to explain geopolitics on a sandbox level.

How can we learn more about you and your projects?

You can find more of my personal work on my website https://lukassteinmaier.pb.online/