How To Have Sex offers an unflinching, visceral exploration of the sinister side of youth party culture in the UK. We follow three 16-year-old friends, Tara (McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake), as they arrive in Malia, ready to have the “best trip ever” – filled, of course, with plenty of hook-ups. Skye is particularly keen for Tara to lose her virginity.

As the girls move from grubby club to grubby club, it’s a blurry, unending sea of neon and glitter and smoke and sweat. They party on and on and on, pausing only to shut their eyes for a few hours in the morning before peeling off their miniskirts and crop tops, changing into new sets and going again. They collect new friends along the way – namely Badger (Shaun Thomas), a tattooed, bleach-blonde chainsmoker with a heart of gold, and his leery, laddy friend Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). When Tara is sexually assaulted twice by Paddy, she struggles to communicate her situation to her two friends. They in turn continue their light-hearted jokes about what they assume is a budding romance with Paddy. And so layers are peeled back, and we see this gleeful debauchery in an increasingly sickening new light.

How To Have Sex: director Molly Manning Walker and actor Mia McKenna-Bruce on hyperrealism, female friendship and talking about consent