Shiva Baby, a queer, Jewish, indie comedy film starring fellow NYU student Rachel Sennott (Bottoms, Bodies Bodies Bodies) premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was met with critical acclaim, cementing their wunderkind status at just 24 years old.
Earning the 2022 Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, Seligman tapped into their own experiences when writing Shiva Baby, growing up in Toronto within a Jewish household. The film portrays a young woman sitting shiva with her family, unexpectedly running into her sugar daddy.
When collaborating on Shiva Baby, Seligman and Sennott quickly gelled and began co-writing the satirical high school comedy that would become Bottoms.
Lesbian teen sex comedy, Bottoms, follows two unpopular queer high-school students who create a self-defence club in an attempt to lose their virginities to their cheerleader crushes, inadvertently creating a high school fight club.
It felt important to me to want to portray queer teen female characters that have normal, human desires.
Seligman for Harpers Bazaar
Following a limited theatrical release, Bottoms received positive reviews from both critics and audiences, with a 90% rotten tomatometer.
In an interview with Femfilmfans, Seligman discussed why sex and sexuality are often key themes in their films: “Women decode sexual messaging from a young age, from eight years old to twenty-two years old. They have to process what sex means, what it can do for them, what it should do for them, what they’re supposed to do for it. Technology, for example with porn or dating sites, has made the sexual messaging more confusing, and I’m interested in how women figure it out.”
Seligman has since been named on Forbes’ 2024 '30 Under 30' list, and when asked what is next for them by CBC, they expressed their desire to direct a horror film: “There’s something very gnarly and spooky and scary and kind of sexy about working with something so fantastical. I think the older I get, the more I appreciate escapism.”
