Director Mary Bronstein’s film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – premiering at Sundance 2025 and set to be distributed by A24 – is a trip into the exhausting and overwhelming life of a mother named Linda, who is bombarded by tribulations. Shot in close-up, the audience is glued to Linda, experiencing her stress of unrelenting conflicts and her escape into a surreal reality.

Here, sound supervisor/sound designer Filipe Messeder (who helped mix the film) and re-recording mixer Ruy Garcia talk about their close collaboration with dir. Bronstein and picture editor Lucian Johnston, choosing exact sounds to play in each moment to clearly communicate off-screen events, designing surreal soundscapes that take the place of score, using the full surround field and crafting a dynamic mix to engage and immerse the audience, and more!

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was edited and mixed at Postworks NY.

From L to R: Re-recording Mixer Ruy Garcia , Director Mary Bronstein, Sound Supervisor/Designer Filipe Messeder, Post Supervisor Rita Walsh, and Sound Effects Editor Abby Harrison.

When did you get started on the film and what did director Mary Bronstein want you to tackle first? Was there an aspect of the sound she was focused on initially?

Filipe Messeder (FM): Were we involved very early; we were both sent scripts and a lookbook presentation with all of their design and aesthetic ideas. Sound concepts were written into the script. This gave us a very clear direction in which to start thinking about sound. From our very first meeting, we discussed exactly what they were…