Hugo de Sousa and Sarah Whelden are Best Friends with the Devil
Arts
Friendships can be easy to start and difficult to end. Best Friends with the Devil, the latest short film from writer-director Hugo de Sousa, explores themes of the complexity of friendships and how treasured relationships can become toxic. However, de Sousa’s friendship with cinematographer Sarah Whelden is anything but sour, and together, they are headed to Austin, Texas, to premiere their short film at South By Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) 2026 this Friday.
“I got the call like a week before Thanksgiving,” de Sousa says. “It was a good call to get.” Best Friends with the Devil begins with a deceptively simple premise. Lola (Ellyn Jameson, Barry, Marshals) is searching for her missing best friend, Amy (Kailee McGee, The Idea of a You), and refuses to sit around waiting for the authorities to act. Her investigation takes her across Los Angeles and eventually leads her to David (de Sousa), a stranger who claims he saw Amy shortly before she vanished. As Lola decides to trust him and follow the trail, conflicting stories and hidden motives begin to surface, trapping her in a web of deception where nothing is quite what it seems — and where discovering the truth may come at a devastating cost.
De Sousa’s films often move between deadpan comedy and emotional unease, focusing on characters navigating everyday situations that slowly slip into the strange or uncomfortable. His debut short, The Event, a hilarious and all-too-relatable comedy about a young filmmaker who can’t seem to get his best friend to watch his short film, screened at Slamdance, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest before premiering online as a Vimeo Staff Pick and landing on NoBudge’s list of the Top 12 Films of 2023. His follow-up, Je Ne Suis Pas Une Star De Cinéma, premiered at FEST, marking a darker comedic turn with a sharp, unsettling tone.
The collaboration with Whelden grew out of a meeting on the festival circuit. “I saw an incredible short that Hugo made called The Event, which is one of my all-time favorite short films,” Whelden says. The two met at Salute Your Shorts, a short film festival in Los Angeles, and six months later, Whelden got an email from De Sousa suggesting a collaboration. “Hugo had a script and wanted me to take a look, and here we are,” Whelden says. Whelden brings more than 15 years of experience to the film, with cinematography credits spanning commercials, documentaries, music videos and narrative features. In 2025, she was named a Rising Star of Cinematography by the ASC and American Cinematographer magazine shortly after winning first place in Women in Media’s Altitude Awards.
The earliest idea for Best Friends with the Devil came from a desire to create something visually different from de Sousa’s earlier film. “I was trying to film something outside of my apartment,” de Sousa says matter-of-factly. “I wanted to do an inverse of that, you know, two people on a hike somewhere outside.” The initial concept formed quickly, but the story took time to find its final shape. I wrote the first five pages of this two years ago,” de Sousa says. “The first idea was just two people on a hike and… they’re looking for someone. And then the second idea was like, then one of them gets a phone call that changes their dynamic.” The missing piece came later, after de Sousa revisited the project while watching a classic thriller.
“I was watching that movie, Wild Things, with Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon,” de Sousa says. “In that movie, there’s a lot of twists, and that kind of becomes the joke of the movie, like one after another.” The idea of throwing in such a twist sparked de Sousa’s imagination, and a finished script came together quickly. “The movie’s about friendship, and friendships kind of fade,” de Sousa says. “Sometimes they’re very circumstantial… And in my life, when a friendship fades, I tend to feel really guilty… So Lola’s story in her relationship with Amy’s kind of like a visual manifestation of that, and how that guilt can lead you down the wrong path.” The SXSW premiere marks a milestone for the filmmakers and their friendship. For Whelden, festivals like SXSW remain one of the most vital parts of filmmaking culture. “It’s everything I love about cinema,” Whelden says. “We have a group of people who all love cinema, love the work, love what we do. And we all get together and watch each other’s films and celebrate… this art in a way that I think is like we desperately need right now in the world.”
Whether Best Friends with the Devil ultimately reveals loyalty, betrayal or something in between, de Sousa and Whelden’s own partnership proves that some creative friendships only grow stronger with time. And if the film leaves audiences questioning who they can trust, the filmmakers themselves seem perfectly certain they’ve found something good.
Read more film interviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Oliver Laxe and the Journey of Sirat
Patience is a Virtue for Ernest Harden Jr, and There’s Virtue in Patients
