Jimpa (John Lithgow) and Hannah (Olivia Colman) holding each other.

The Cast and Crew of Jimpa Fight Ignorance and Hate With Love and Solidarity

Film Interviews

The week of January 20, 2025 will go down in history as a devastating time for the LGBTQ+ community and for empathetic allies everywhere. However on January 23, in Park City, Utah, the audience at the Eccles Center got to see a beacon of light shining in the darkness in the form of  Sophie Hyde’s deeply personal and heartfelt new film, Jimpa.

Jimpa tells the story of Hannah Hill (Academy Award winner Olivia Colman, The Favourite), who travels to Amsterdam with Frances, her nonbinary teenager (Aud Mason-Hyde), to visit their estranged grandfather, Jim “Jimpa” Hill (two-time Academy Award nominee John Lithgow, Terms of Endearment, The World According to Garp). Set against the backdrop of Amsterdam’s vibrant gay community, the film weaves an expansive tale of intergenerational connections, queer identity and the complexities of family dynamics. Hyde co-wrote Jimpa with longtime collaborator Matthew Cormack (52 Tuesdays), infusing the film with elements of her own life growing up with a father who came out of the closet, as well as having a nonbinary child.  The result is a poignant portrait of love, acceptance and self-discovery, as well as a celebration of the queer community.

“We are incredibly interesting, amazing, vivacious creatures. It’s really important to me to break away from the idea that you can only be one thing.” 

Sophie Hyde, director of Jimpa
Sophie Hyde, director of Jimpa, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of the Sundance Institute | Photo: Thomas McCammon.

“We had so many members of the community inside our team,” Hyde says. “Inside our cast, and on screen. It was wild to be able to have four older gay characters talking to a teenage nonbinary character about ideas of queerness, about being in love and what that means. We also wanted to tell a story that wasn’t a singular story. It wasn’t standing in for any one part of the community, but it was exploring the idea of the expansiveness of the community and how open and loving and joyful it can be.” The film’s themes feel especially timely, as on his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed sweeping legislation officially recognizing only two genders in the United States. The contrast between the film’s celebration of diversity and the current political climate is unmistakable. “For me, sexuality, gender and all of the things are very expansive ideas,” Hyde said. “We’re not designed to be placed in boxes, or into a binary idea. Our world is not like that, biology is not like that and certainly, socially, we’re not like that. We are incredibly interesting, amazing, vivacious creatures. It’s really important to me to break away from the idea that you can only be one thing.” 

“We knew we were making a wonderful film. We didn’t realize we were making an essential film”

Lithgow, who plays the larger-than-life titular character, Jimpa, describes the role as both challenging and rewarding. “I think his unpredictability, his joy, how impossible he is — it’s impossible to dislike him. He’s completely adorable, but he’s also infuriating,” Lithgow says. “What made it really compelling was that it was an intimate portrait in a film made by his daughter. And he was a huge, beloved hero in her life. She has plenty of complicated feelings about him, but I just knew that this was gonna be a deep dive into a character that she knows inside and out, and I was going to share that experience with her.” As for the timing of the premiere and the current atmosphere of tension in America, Lithgow sees a resonance to the film and an opportunity to fight hate with love. “We knew we were making a wonderful film. We didn’t realize we were making an essential film,” Lithgow says. “You have to remember, we made this long before the November election, not to mention before the past week. And it really is alarming — there’s so much hatred in the air, so much cruelty, and we’re not a hateful, cruel country. But this is a film that’s all about love and how complicated love can be, and believing that all you need is love.” As Lithgow reflects on how one of his most famous characters, Dick Solomon, the alien high commander sent to observe earth and learn from its inhabitants in the ‘90s sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, he finds it sobering to think what the Solomons would have thought if they came to earth in 2025. “I’m afraid 3rd Rock From The Sun wouldn’t be a comedy if it was made today,” Lithgow says.

“We need to not hide away alone, but come together and unify and be in solidarity and hold each other close”

Echoing those sentiments was Lithgow’s co-star, Aud Mason-Hyde. “I feel like it’s the right time for us to shift the focus as communities, and shift it back into ourselves,” Mason-Hyde says. The actor, who uses they/them pronouns, makes a big impression in a unique role, acting in their mother’s film and playing a character based on themselves.  “We need to not hide away alone, but come together and unify and be in solidarity and hold each other close,” Mason-Hyde says. “And I feel like that’s what this film is about. So I’m actually really excited to be here and be showing everyone.”

The experience of working on Jimpa was a surreal and joyful one for Mason-Hyde. “It’s been wonderful. It’s just been a process of pure joy and pure family,” they say. “I’m working with my real family, and we have an on-screen family, but I also feel like the whole crew became a family. And it’s been so wonderful and so loving.”

In a moment of societal division, Jimpa celebrates the beauty and complexity of human connection and finds joy in embracing our differences while finding common ground. It’s a film that challenges us to embrace our shared humanity, and its simple message of love is a hopeful counterpoint to these troublesome times.

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.