Sex Ed
The blurb: Ed teaches sex education to teenagers, a job he usually loves. But today it’s the last thing he wants to do.
This astonishingly good short film uses a 9-minute single take to create the pressure-cooker situation of a man trying to teach sex ed while repressing his own personal tragedy. It’s funny, cringey and also deeply emotional.
Director Alice Seabright told Director’s Notes:
We loved the idea of someone whose job was to talk about sex and intimacy with people at an age where they are so embarrassed, so afraid of showing any vulnerability and yet so completely out of their depth. Particularly in an era of easily accessible online porn, these kids know so much and yet so little. And it was a great opportunity to write lots of jokes about penises.
Ultimately what we were interested in was throwing our character into that pressure-cooker situation and watching him break. So the idea of his personal problem getting in the way of his lesson emerged. Every beat of the lesson, every rude personal question, is chipping away at his ability to keep it together. I remember moments at school when you would see your teacher’s facade break and you would go from seeing them as an annoying figure of authority to a vulnerable human being like yourself. That’s what we wanted to capture.
We also ended up finding ourselves talking about expectations around gender, and particularly masculinity. All the boys in the class are desperately putting on a front and so is poor Ed, until he can’t do it anymore.
AWARDS:
Best Comedy, Aesthetica Film Festival
Critic’s Choice, Ennesimo Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION:
BFI London Film Festival
Encounters Film Festival
London Short Film Festival
Underwire Film Festival
Aesthetica Film Festival
ÉCU – The European Independent Film Festival
British Shorts Film Festival, Berlin
interfilm, 34th International Short Film Festival Berlin
Dingle International Film Festival
Prague Short Film Festival
The Shortest Nights
Two Short Nights
Le Petit Cannes
Ennesimo Film Festival
Fastnet Film Festival
Bolton Film Festival
snhit worlwide short film festival
Length: 12:58
Director: Alice Seabright
Year: 2019