“It feels like the little movie that could,” Alia Shawkat says of “Atropia,” her latest film that took home the top prize at Sundance last year and is now in theaters. 

“We won Sundance, which was such a high, but then had a hard time getting distribution and that’s just the way it goes,” she adds. “Everyone seemed to respond to it really strongly because it is such a weird, unique movie and tone. And it’s not such an easy, decisive, feel-good movie. You walk away being a little confused in a good way, I think.”

“Atropia,” directed by Hailey Gates and produced by Luca Guadagnino, is a satirical war film set in 2006 based in Atropia, a fictional country that hosts war simulations for U.S. military trainees. The “country” is staffed by actors playing various roles of Iraqis including Fayruz, played by Shawkat, whose father is from Baghdad. The film costars Callum Turner, Chloë Sevigny and Tim Heidecker, with a cameo by Channing Tatum.

One of the more shocking details about the film is that such war simulation campuses exist. Gates was familiar with them, having grown up in Southern California, where many are based, and while Shawkat grew up near one in Palm Springs, she learned of their existence from the film. 

Shawkat and Gates met around 2018, when Gates asked her to be part of “Shako Mako,” the short film “Atropia” is adapted from. The experience of making the short, which was part of Miu Miu’s “Women’s Tales” film program, started a friendship between the two, and one day they found themselves each bemoaning the stages of their careers. 

“We were having a moment of frustration when both of our projects weren’t happening,” Shawkat says. “We went back to ‘Shako Mako’ and were  like, ‘what an amazing world and character that’s so specific to us that no one else could do. So why are we sleeping on it?’ And then she just wrote a draft super fast and I was like, ‘Oh, you were being serious.’”

When Shawkat got pregnant, they decided to write her pregnancy into the script. 

“Hailey just always took every left turn as a sign that’s the direction she had to go in,” Shawkat says of how Gates reacted to her pregnancy. “And now I can’t imagine the movie without it. It’s such a grounding part of the movie. And again, it’s another perfect visual metaphor of someone who’s in denial about the reality of what she’s doing and what she’s avoiding. Real life is actually happening and she’s pretending to lose it all the time. It’s a really good part of the story.”

Doing the feature-length version of the film was even more gratifying for Shawkat.

“It’s just such a specific world and a specific character that I feel like I’m probably one of five actors who could do it,” she says. “It’s so comedic. She’s supposed to be Iraqi but she’s also an actress, and it just was such a perfect role for me.”

Shawkat is now in New York, in rehearsals for an off-Broadway play called “You Got Older,” which begins previews on Feb. 12 at A24’s Cherry Lane Theatre. In the spring, she will be seen in Neon’s “The Wrong Girls,” written by Kristen Stewart and her wife Dylan Meyer, and directed by Meyer, in her debut. Shawkat stars with Stewart, Seth Rogen and LaKeith Stanfield, among others.

“It was so much fun. I feel really lucky these last couple of years, I’ve just worked with my really close girlfriends on a lot of their first features,” Shawkat says. “I did Zoe Kravitz’s first movie ‘Blink Twice,’ and then Hailey’s with ‘Atropia,’ and then Dylan Meyer’s [movie] starring Kristen Stewart, her wife, and they’re just the coolest couple ever. They’re just like, nice, supportive, funny, cool. They’re just so rad.”

The movie is a “stoner comedy” that is “so dumb, but smart and really fun,” Shawkat says. “I’m excited for people to see it. I think we’re ready for a girl stoner comedy.”