This year marks the first time In The Seats is covering the film festival at Whistler and A Wicked Eden makes for an interesting inaugural movie to review. The documentary, for the most part, successfully juggles the way it captures its many Eves. Its central subject is Alexandra Snow, a woman who does like BDSM sessions and makes solo, duo, and group content online. But it also lends time to document her community.

Some of those community members include Astro Domina and Raevyn Rose, the latter at least living a few time zones away from Snow. It’s specifically delightful to hear Rose talk glowingly about Domina and Snow, who she at first admired from afar. Rose talks about how she met both and decided that making content was something she can do.

A Wicked Eden, also for the most part, does not reduce these women to their work, as it gives time to let them talk about their personal life. Some of it is interesting, especially as it dives into Rose and Snow’s childhoods. And it delves into those subjects without using the cliché of a sex worker with a bad childhood. I’m also partial to anyone who parents cats. Other slices don’t have that same gripping effect, like Snow’s divorce, or both women’s difficulties with dating.

Another topic that I was looking forward to the most is race, since Domina and Rose aren’t white and neither is Mo, one of Snow’s subs. But I’ll give that a pass. And that’s because the movie, on other aspects, emphasizes innovation. That quality is necessary in making online content regardless of that content’s target demographic or target viewership. It also shows the BDSM community as a refuge for people. There, they subvert the hyper gender norms in the mainstream world.

A Wicked Eden screens tonight at Whistler’s Rainbow theatre and will go online on December 11. Waiting that long feels like torture but you probably like that.