Adult Life Skills

 

Director: Rachel Tunnard

Time: 96 min

Category: Fiction Long shots

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Closing film

Anna is stuck: she's approaching 30, 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".



In 2015, Rachel Tunnard’s Emotional Fusebox screened at This is England and quickly emerged as an audience favourite. This short film ended up grading the Jury Award for Best Fiction after an already impressive festival run and BAFTA nomination. To expand on this story of a young woman seemingly stuck in her life and in her mother’s shed, Rachel Tunnard adapted her script into a feature film, Adult Life Skills, that won the Nora Ephron prize for best female director at Tribeca. « It is basically the same themes as Rocky if you think about it. But with thumbs. And a cowboy. And no boxing » said Rachel Tunnard. Discover this film after the festival’s awards ceremony.