By George & Josh Bate
Never has watching two people argue been so enthralling as it is in And Her Body Was Never Found, a new movie that made its world premiere at SXSW 2026, which we recently crowned as our favorite movie of the festival.
And Her Body Was Never Found follows Jeff (Polaris Banks) and Keren (Mor Cohen), a couple who trek deep into the wilderness for a get away. Rather than enjoy the beautiful nature they are surrounded by, the couple become consumed by incessant arguments that escalate until they both start to question if they’ll make it out of this excursion alive.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with Polaris Banks and Mor Cohen, the stars and creative masterminds behind And Her Body Was Never Found, about their new movie, how they willed it into existence, putting their own real-life arguments into the film, its status as a relationship horror movie, and more.
The film begins with on-screen text reading, “This movie was only made by two people.” This means that, both on-screen and behind-the-scenes, And Her Body Was Never Found is a deeply intimate endeavor. Polaris Banks and Mor Cohen, who are married in real life, oversee every inch of Banks’ feature directorial debut, which he co-wrote alongside his wife. But the two are also the only actors who feature in a film that begins as a depiction of a couple’s escalating arguments before reinventing itself in a number of unexpected and truly original ways.
Banks, who gained attention with the viral fan film Casey Jones in 2011, discussed why he chose to wear so many hats in crafting his first movie. “If you work a lot and, starting out with no support, that’s kind of what you get used to – doing everything yourself,” Banks described. “I shot a feature when I was 15 to 18, just grabbing people to hold the camera. And I was in it because I was the only one who would show up consistently, and friends on the weekend and stuff. Since then, and with other shorts I made like Wreck Law and Casey Jones, my name is all over the credits, because I can’t afford anybody else. So that was a skill that I had developed.”
After struggling to get several projects off the ground, Cohen and Mor knew they had to create a film unlike anything seen before. “We tried making short films and we tried doing proof of concepts,” Cohen said. “Polaris has fully written scripts and four other ideas that are in treatment and development stages. And I have my own stuff. Everything that we’ve done that was supposed to quote unquote take us to the next step or next level just kind of like was like, ‘OK, that was great.’ And then nothing came out of it. And we’re like, ‘We just have to make something that is a little more bold and a little more daring.’”
Bold and daring don’t begin to describe the sheer novelty of And Her Body Was Never Found, a film that confirms that, after 138 years of cinema history, there are still unreservedly unique viewing experiences to be had and genuinely original movies to fall in love with.
To create the marital conflict at the heart of their film, Banks and Cohen drew upon arguments they’ve had in real life as a couple, going so far as to actually recreate several actual disputes on camera. Banks discussed the origins of his interest in dramatizing and heightening their marital conflict for a feature film. “Anytime my wife and I were having an argument, 80 percent of me was there being like, ‘Oh, I’m offended by her saying that.’” explained Banks. “But then 20 percent was just floating behind my shoulder being like, ‘Look at how animated she is.’ And that was funny. I always found it very entertaining….You’re so interesting to watch when you argue. So I just had that as something I want to share with people. This morbidly entertaining thing that we do.”
“We’re very open about this, but we’ve been married for almost seven years now and it wasn’t always easy ,” Cohen elaborated. “And a lot of it is put into the movie. Basically, those arguments are based on real arguments we had that are recontextualized and, of course, exaggerated in many, many different pivotal points of the plot.”
It’s a testament to Banks and Cohen’s writing and acting that the arguments that encompass And Her Body Was Never Found feel deeply authentic – as if you somehow voyeuristically stumbled into real arguments unfolding before your eyes. Remarkably, Cohen revealed, “Nothing was improvised” as the film was the product of meticulous planning. “It was the reason the movie kind of moves at a pace where it should be,” Banks explained. “It should be tedious. It should be boring. But everyone’s like, I just flew by. It’s because we stuck to the script. I’m spending months making sure every note in the piece of music has rhythm and feeds into the next thing and it’s all mapped out. This word triggers this part of the argument. I think, for this particular project, any improv would suddenly make the project more sluggish. But also, if you’re shooting with one camera, you need consistency so that it’s perfect, because there’s no multiple coverage. And another thing, if you’re shooting with the sun going down and you’ve got to factor in two hours of hiking back and forth, you’ve got to nail it. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re doing. You can’t find it with improv on the day…. You got to have a plan and execute it.”
The authenticity of the difficult material also meant that extensive planning ahead of production was vital. “It’s such vulnerable material that you have to [prepare],” Cohen said. “Specifically because the fights have to lead to something. It’s a chain, basically a spiral that just keeps going on and on and on. And so it has to be accurate.”
Cohen elaborated on how her husband and the film’s director Banks viewed the screenplay as a contract. “Polaris refers to it as the contract,” Cohen explained. “Basically, the script is a contract in those situations, because it’s so personal and raw and real. This is what we agreed on. This is what we came there to do. There’s not going to be any real negotiation. Like are we revealing this part about ourselves?…Especially for throwing insults at each other and revealing gutting things to say about each other, which not necessarily are all true, but we literally had discussions about like, ‘Okay, this is a made up thing that we said in one of these arguments. But are people going to think that it’s real? Are we comfortable with them?’ We ended up cutting a lot of the fictional elements and going, ‘Well, let’s say what is the truth? What are we comfortable with people assuming about us? Because they probably will think it’s real.’”
In addition to being creatively fulfilling, Banks found the movie to be “a therapeutic exercise.” He elaborated, “It was like watching yourself from the outside. And then I could really admit things to myself about some behavior and how we’re not communicating correctly.”
The weaving in of Banks and Cohen’s actual relationship gives And Her Body Was Never Found a certain meta quality, but, as the film progresses and heads in a number of unexpected directions, it adopts even more meta layers. Without delving into spoilers, one of these layers sees the film suddenly embrace found footage, in particular vertically oriented footage shot by a smart phone. “It’s a concept that is kind of prescient to our moment now,” Banks described when discussing the inclusion of phone footage in his movie. “Like police officers and other people, we try and use the cell phones to catch each other, to document that. Or to put them in jail or cancel the people and have a husband and wife being like, ‘He’s going to say something he’s going to regret. I’m going to say it.’ It was a great device to explain why we’re filming and not just putting the camera down and talking to each other.”
Cohen spoke joyfully of the opportunity to play a character who also operates the camera at times. “I found my second wind in this shoot,” recounted Cohen. “When I got to do the cinematography for that part, I did not know how much joy I can have as a character operating a camera, because it’s one thing if I’m just shooting, we shot each other before, but the camera was almost another layer of my character and I could be so spiteful and petty with it. It was so fun.”
Without getting into spoilers (as And Her Body Was Never Found is certainly most enjoyed when knowing as little as possible heading in), the film can perhaps be best classified as a relationship horror movie, a categorization that Cohen resonates with. “I think we accidentally tapped into a sub-genre that is probably my favorite genre to watch and to make,” said Cohen. “Basically all the films that I’m developing right now [are relationship horror].
Banks believes the relationship horror sub-genre offers scares more relatable and, in turn, terrifying than traditional horror fare. “We showed very few people this movie before it was finished,” remarked Banks. “They were talking about how the movie was giving them PTSD and their heart pumping, because no one relates to being chased by an axe – but they relate to these frustrations. You get a real visceral response out of just arguments and real situations couples put themselves in and it’s horrific.”
For a movie about two people incessantly arguing with one another, And Her Body Was Never Found is a remarkably crowd-pleasing watch, something Banks was hoping to achieve in making the film. “I want everything I make to be first and foremost entertaining and thrilling and fun, because that’s what I love about Hitchcock and Fincher and stuff – they take these dark things and make them accessible and fun,” he said.
Through plot twists, role reversals, immersive performances, and meta layers, Banks and Cohen’s film continually challenges (and entertains) the audience. The word ‘creative’ doesn’t begin to describe And Her Body Was Never Found, the best movie of SXSW 2026.