Skip to main content
How to Have Sex film image

How to Have Sex

This event has passed

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

This event has passed.

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.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Miroirs No. 3

Dir. Christian Petzold
86 min

Following a car crash that kills her boyfriend, piano student Laura is physically unhurt but emotionally distraught. A local woman takes her in, but she gradually realizes she's in the midst of an eerie, mysterious family situation.

Image: © Schramm Film A4 Kopie

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Things You Kill

Dir. Alireza Khatami
113 min

Thirty-something professor Ali leads an apparently stable life. But when his ailing mother dies under ambiguous circumstances, he starts to unravel, resulting in an act that shatters our understanding of his person.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Silver Screamers

Dir. Sean Cisterna
94 min

In this funny, touching doc, a group of retirees are persuaded to get off the couch and make a horror movie about a killer rug...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Ghost Elephants

Dir. Werner Herzog
99 min

Everyone's favourite German adventurer, Werner Herzog goes on the hunt for the largest land mammal on the planet, the fabled "ghost elephant" of the Angolan highlands -- that may, or may not, exist.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

A Tribe Called Love

Dir. Mohamed Ahmed
95 min

Set in a Somali neighbourhood in Toronto, Mohamed Ahmed's film follows teenagers Farah and Halima as they fall in love despite warnings to stay apart because they're from different tribes

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Erika Chow + Blue Giant

Dir. Yuzuru Tachikawa
180 min

Revered pianist Hiromi Uehar composed the score for this electrifying jazz anime, about a young man who wants to be the next John Coltrane. Before the film, tenor sax Erika Chow will lead a quartet through selections from the soundtrack.

Image: © 2023 BLUE GIANT Movie project ©2013 Shinichi Ishizuka, Shogakukan

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema