People make movies for many reasons – fame, fortune, artistry. Mor Cohen and her husband, Polaris Banks, ended up saving their marriage when they went to the middle of nowhere to film twisty meta-horror And Her Body Was Never Found.
Premiering at South by Southwest this week, it’s a literal two-hander from the Austin filmmaking couple, who wrote, directed, filmed, and are the sole cast members in this story of indie filmmakers playing a warring couple, only for the story to worm its way beyond the narrative.
According to Cohen, the film came from “me bugging Polaris for maybe three or four years that we need to do a movie together.” Finally, she suggested doing “something very cheap, with just us, whatever resources we have, and he took it from there.”
Banks’ first idea was a horror movie set on a camping expedition. But rather than a faceless slasher, he realized that “the scariest thing is if the person you’re with is trying to kill you, and then I went, ‘what if we went off to make the movie, and real me was trying to kill you, and behind-the-scenes me was trying to kill you?’”
That fear was in part inspired by Cohen’s own experiences as an actor. “I sometimes shoot on location,” she said, “and I’m going, ‘I’m literally driving into this tiny town, not knowing anybody.’”
This wasn’t just about the fear of strangers, but the fact that Banks’ and Cohen’s relationship was in a very unhealthy place.
“We were in a very difficult time in our marriage,” Cohen said. “Our couples therapist told us, ‘You shouldn’t go make this movie, it will break you up.’”
There are whole stretches of dialogue that are almost word-for-word taken from real arguments they’d had, as Banks’ script drew on their real problems. Cohen said, “He would sit me down and go, ‘I need to ask you personal questions about your relationship with me,’ and I was like, ‘Are we gonna break up?’”
In spite of their tensions and fears, Banks and Cohen headed to Washington state to start filming. Just two people, a lot of kit, and the wilderness. Banks said, “Mor, every time, would go, ‘Do we have to shoot there?’ and I’d go, ‘Yes! I know it’s a pain, I know this is too cold.’ She was trying to find a river in Texas, and I would say, ‘They’re not the same. We need to shoot in the ice river, we need a mountaintop at the end, we have a cliff.’”
This means shooting pivotal scenes in rivers, in forests, on cliffs, all the while literally reenacting old arguments. Cohen said, “We’re talking about waking up, hiking up the mountain for three hours, filming for three hours, and hiking back for three hours before you get stranded there in the dark.”
Since he’d got used to roughing it during location scouting, Banks was fine with all the hardships. In hindsight, he observed, “I should have catered it more to Mor’s needs.” As a filmmaker, he admits to a certain masochistic streak, “and Mor’s been a great counter to that. If I’m shooting a scene from now on, I’ll be like, ‘If Mor would be comfortable doing this, everyone will be fine.’”
Rather than fulfilling their therapist’s prophecy, all these horrible conditions and onscreen fights based on real arguments made their relationship stronger. Cohen said, “if anything I think it saved our marriage. It taught us to be a real couple.”
And Her Body Was Never Found
Visions, World Premiere
Saturday 14, 6pm, Alamo Lamar
Monday 16, 3:15pm, Alamo Lamar
Wednesday 18, 9:30pm, Alamo Lamar
This article appears in SXSW 2026 Festival Guide.
