Director: Molly Manning Walker
Three lifelong friends chase the perfect end-of-school holiday on the Greek party coast in How to Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker's 2023 drama about the pressure to have a good time.
What is How To Have Sex about?
Tara, Skye, and Em fly out for a week of clubbing, drinking, and sunburn, treating the trip as the last big celebration before their exam results split them onto different paths. Tara, the youngest of the three, feels the unspoken expectation that this holiday should also be the one where she loses her virginity, and the balcony next door — full of older, louder boys — becomes the center of the group's nights. What starts as noise and pool games slowly shifts into something Tara can't quite name or explain to her friends, and the film tracks how a good time can curdle without anyone around her noticing. Mia McKenna-Bruce carries the film as Tara, with Lara Peake and Enva Lewis playing the friends who don't see what's happening until much later.
Cast & crew
Mia McKenna-Bruce won wide festival attention for her lead performance, holding the camera through scenes that ask her to seem fine long after she stops being fine. Lara Peake and Enva Lewis play her closest friends, while Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Eilidh Loan, Daisy Jelley, and Laura Ambler fill out the resort crowd around them.
Context & significance
How to Have Sex premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, where it won the top prize, before opening in UK cinemas later in 2023. Writer-director Molly Manning Walker, previously known as a cinematographer, shot much of the film on the Greek island of Malia using natural light and handheld camera work to keep the party scenes loose and documentary-like. Critics singled out the film's refusal to moralize, letting the audience sit with Tara's discomfort rather than explaining it for her.
Where & how to watch
How to Have Sex streams on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, and this page — synopsis, cast notes, and the FAQs below — can be read by anyone without logging in. A free K-Time account is only needed to press play, and the platform's menus and search are built in Farsi for Persian-speaking audiences.