In Sound of My Voice, amateur documentarists Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) go undercover to investigate a secretive cult led by the enigmatic Maggie (Britt Marling, who also co-wrote the story), who claims to have traveled back in time from the year 2054.
According to co-writer/director Zal Batmanglij:
We were interested in fringe groups. And there were a lot of them in Los Angeles, so we were exposed to a bunch of them. They influenced the soup that Brit and I were making.
We were going to this group — I don’t want to say its name — and we were really moved by what they were doing, physically. Their exercises and way of being was, I think, state of the art. But the people who were drawn to the groups had this sort of brokenness that was a little overwhelming. And this desire to sort of heal themselves with a quick fix. That was really overwhelming. If they were broken and could just stay in their brokenness, I think, Brit and I would have been more comfortable with the situation. But the idea that this group was going to save them with a snap of a finger fascinated me. And I think that that’s really the impetus of Sound Of My Voice.