Rachel Tunnard is set to return to the director's chair at the end of the month with her first feature film Adult Life Skills.
Adult Life Skills
Adult Life Skills is a feature film that is based on Bafta-nominated short film Emotional Fusebox, which was released back in 2014.
Emotional Fusebox went on to be nominated for Best Short Film at the Bafta Awards, the British Independent Film Award and was selected to be screened at the London Film Festival.
To celebrate the upcoming release of Adult Life Skills, we have Emotional Fusebox for you to watch in full:
Adult Life Skills sees Tunnard on both directing and writing duties as she makes the transition into feature film for the very first time. The movie sees the filmmaker reunite with Jodie Whittaker, who reprises the central role of Anna.
A terrific cast has been assembled for the film as Lorraine Ashbourne, Brett Goldstein, Rachael Deering, Eileen Davies, Alice Lowe, and Edward Hogg are also on board. The movie will also introduce us to the acting talents of Ozzy Myers.
Anna is stuck: she's approaching 30 and having and early-mid-life crisis - one that's seen her regressing to a teenager, living like a hermit in her mum's garden shed and wondering why the suffragettes ever bothered. She spends her days making videos using her thumbs as actors - thumbs that bicker about things like whether Yogi Bear is a moral or existential nihilist. But Anna doesn't show these videos to anyone and no one knows what they are for.
A week before her birthday her Mum serves her an ultimatum - she needs to move out of the shed, get a haircut that doesn't put her gender in question and stop dressing like a homeless teenager. Naturally, Anna tells her Mum to BACK THE F-OFF. However, when her school friend comes to visit, Anna's self-imposed isolation becomes impossible to maintain. Soon she is entangled with a troubled eight-year-old boy obsessed with Westerns, and the local real estate agent whose awkwardness continually undermines his attempts to seduce her.
This is a story about confronting the things we are most scared of - that explores the universal themes of being lost and finding yourself, making peace with who you are, and regaining self-confidence and dignity.
Adult Life Skills has already won the Nora Ephron Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival and is set to be one of the British movies that is not to be missed this summer.
Adult Life Skills is released 24th June.