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How to Have Sex

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Sixteen-year-old Tara and her two best friends arrive at a Greek party town ready to let their hair down. They scope out the scene and quickly make friends with a group of suitors across the hall. Convenient because Tara’s friends decided that it’s time for her to lose her virginity. But while Tara is indeed down for some summer fun, her boundaries keep getting trampled on by those closest to her.

Winner of the Cannes’ 2023 Un Certain Regard Prize, Molly Manning Walker makes waves with this devastating feature debut that interrogates the lines of consent with sobering clarity. Deceptively overt and intentional with its hypersexualized stylistic choices, the filmmaker creates a veil of youthful abandon that in turn highlights the smallest of reservations. She weaves a complex character arc, slowly but surely breaking away from the neon-tinted party delights, until the ruckus dissolves into a deafening silence in the wake of physical and emotional transgressions; it’s especially astute in identifying the deeper wounding coming from the inner circle.

 

Un Certain Regard Prize, Cannes 2023

Director
Cast

Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Enva Lewis, Laura Ambler

Credits
Country of Origin

UK/Greece

Year

2023

Series

Showcase

Language

English

Film Contact
Content Warning

Sexual Violence, Drug & Alcohol Abuse, Flashing/Strobing Lights

18+

At The Park

19+

At The Rio

98 min
Award Winners Drama LGBTQIA2S+ Women Directors

Book Tickets

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Credits

Executive Producer

Farhana Bhula, Ben Coren, Kristin Irving, Giorgos Karnavas, Nathanaël Karmitz, Fionnuala Jamison, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross

Producer

Ivana Mackinnon, Emily Leo, Konstantinos Kontovrakis

Screenwriter

Molly Manning Walker

Cinematography

Nicolas Canniccioni

Editor

Fin Oates

Production Design

Luke Moran-Morris

Original Music

James Jacob

Director

Molly Manning Walker headshot

Molly Manning Walker

Molly Manning Walker is a cinematographer and writer-director based in London, UK. She graduated from the NFTS Cinematography course in 2019. Molly’s first short film Good Thanks, You? was produced by DMC and Try Hard Films. It was included in the Semaine De La Critique program at Cannes and her debut feature, How To Have Sex, subsequently won the Next Step prize at Cannes for the script. Molly’s second short, The Forgotten C was also BIFA nominated. As a DP, she works across formats from documentary, fiction and advertising and recently shot Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winning Scrapper with director Charlotte Regan.

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