A very funny fast-paced first feature from Sophie Harvey, WFF almuna producer Rachel Talalay’s daughter. The film takes a very funny look at a six week course offered in American high schools to help students prepare for their SAT tests.

Former WFF Star to Watch Julia Sarah Stone plays Ava, a very introverted girl who suffers through high school more intensely than most. The film has been largely improvised, and was inspired by the director’s own hellish experiences in high school. In fact, upon graduating at the age of seventeen, it has been Sophie’s intention to make a comedy about scholastic institutions’ inability to adapt to the needs of less outgoing students. It has taken her six years to realize her dream with this, her first film.

Many people collaborated on this comic improvisation film, including singer Lucia Fasano, puppeteer Valerie Meiss and stand-up comic KC Novak. A diverse cast makes up the bulk of the student body and is a source of some laughs, as the vacuous blonde goddess can’t figure out why her boyfriend dumped her for a rich Asian girl, one whose definition of the perfect man is someone “who will carry my shopping bags”.

Mean girls, popular girls, shy girls, and the goofus guys who pursue them are all part of the horrors of high school, as told from a storyteller that has experienced angst in the hallways herself, not that many years ago. A fresh take on familiar comic turf is the result.