Mubi has acquired British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature How to Have Sex, which is set to debut in Un Certain Regard at the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival.
The streamer has taken all rights for North America, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Latin America, Turkey, and Benelux. Announcing the deal, Mubi said theatrical releases are planned for “key territories,” including the US and UK, while a theatrical release in the Benelux will be hosted in partnership with Imagine Film Distribution. Following theatrical releases, the film will debut on MUBI in all territories acquired.
Written and directed by Walker, the pic stars Mia McKenna-Bruce (Persuasion, Kindling) alongside Lara Peake (Mood, Brave New World), Shaun Thomas (Ali & Ava, The Long Shadow), Samuel Bottomley (Somewhere Boy, Ladhood), and newcomers Enva Lewis and Laura Ambler. The film was shot by Nicolas Canniccioni (Frontiers, Rojek).
Billed as an “exuberant, nuanced and painfully honest” tale about the intricacies of teenage friendship and how we learn to have sex, the pic follows three British teenage girls who go on a rites-of-passage holiday – drinking, clubbing, and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.
The film is produced by Wild Swim’s Ivana MacKinnon (Beast, Bring Them Down) and Emily Leo (Under the Shadow, Nocebo), alongside Heretic’s Konstantinos Kontovrakis (Triangle of Sadness). Film4 and BFI, awarding National Lottery funding, developed the project and financed alongside mk2 Films.
Executive producers are Farhana Bhula and Ben Coren for Film4, Kristin Irving for the BFI, Nathanaël Karmitz and Fionnuala Jamison for mk2 Films, Giorgos Karnavas for Heretic, and Phil Hunt and Compton Ross for Head Gear. Film4 will retain television and on-demand rights in the UK and Ireland. mk2 films is handling international sales and brokered the deal with MUBI.
Walker cut her teeth as a DOP on a host of shorts and was recently DOP on BBC Film-backed feature Scrapper starring Harris Dickinson. Her first short as director, Good Thanks, You?, premiered at Cannes. She subsequently won the Next Step prize at Cannes for the How to Have Sex script.