Interviews With "The Plague" Stars Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin & Filmmaker Charlie Polinger

The Next Best Picture Podcast

Tv & Film

4.2 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"The Plague" is a psychological drama-thriller film written and directed by Charlie Polinger in his directorial debut, starring Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen, and Joel Edgerton, who is also a producer. The film follows a socially anxious 12-year-old boy who is pulled into a cruel tradition at an all-boys water polo camp. The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it received positive reviews for its direction, writing, and performances from its young stars, receiving three Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best Feature, Best Lead Performance (Everett Blunck), and Best Breakthrough Performance (Kayo Martin). Poling, Blunck, and Martin were all kind enough to spend some time speaking with us about their work and experiences making the film, which you can listen to below. Please be sure to check out the film, now playing in New York and Los Angeles and expanding nationwide on January 2nd, from Independent Film Company. Thank you, and enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is my interview with the director and writer for The Plague, Charlie Polinger, and the film stars Everett Blunk and K.L. Martin.
0:12.7	Where it's day camp. Pretty good.
0:14.6	No, yeah, good news.
0:18.0	I know this whole thing could be a little darkly. Pick it up!
0:22.6	Pick it up!
0:24.6	You guys got the plague. So what's with Eli?
0:39.6	Eli's got the plague.
0:42.9	It's not funny, bro.
0:44.3	Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next best picture of podcast,
0:47.1	where I'm being joined right now by the filmmaker behind the plague, Charlie Polinger.
0:51.2	Charlie, thank you so much for taking your time here to speak with me.
0:54.2	Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, man. I saw this movie at the Cannes Film Festival where it had
0:58.7	its world premiere. It was definitely one that I was looking forward to for a multitude of different
1:03.2	reasons. Joel Egerton's name was attached to it. And I'm always really excited by films
1:09.2	that premiere in the Unc and Regards section of the
1:11.6	festival. And coupled along with hearing that this would be a story from the perspective of a 12-year-old
1:17.9	boy and an old boy's ward Apollo camp, I was thinking, oh man, in this day and age where, you know,
1:23.5	you have adolescents and other movies that are like a tackling the troubled male youth of
1:29.5	today. I had a feeling that this would be special. I guess for you, how special was it just being
1:35.9	a can for this film? I mean, like, that had to have been an amazing feeling in and of itself.
1:41.4	Yeah, I mean, it was like a dream. I think, I never imagined that it would,
1:46.3	that that would have happened. And being in that theater in the Dubuzee with, you know,
	...

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