Lena Dunham secretly directs first film in a decade

NME | Music, Film, TV, Gaming & Pop Culture News

Lena Dunham has written and directed her first film in a decade.

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The Girls creator secretly made the film, Sharp Stick, in compliance with coronavirus protocols in Los Angeles over the past months.

Variety reports that the independent film, financed by FilmNation, screened footage for potential buyers yesterday (March 2) at the European Film Market. No plot details have been shared but the cast includes Kristine Froseth (The Assistant, Looking For Alaska), Taylour Paige (Zola, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal (Ford v Ferrari), Scott Speedman (Best Sellers, You). Dunham also stars.

The actress, writer and director told Variety: “I made my last feature film [Tiny Furniture] 11 years ago in my family home with just a few close friends. It’s a testament to FilmNation and my incredible producers, cast, crew and – especially – my COVID-19 compliance team that this experience felt just as intimate and creatively free.

“This story is incredibly personal to me and a continuation of my career-long mission to create a free dialogue around the complexities of female sexuality and to turn the idea of the ‘likeable’ female protagonist on its head – and you can’t do that in this business on any scale larger than your mother’s living room without forward thinking partners. I feel very lucky.”

Meanwhile, last year Dunham opened-up about her addiction to prescription drugs, saying she hit a low point while recovering from a hysterectomy and splitting from former boyfriend, Jack Antonoff.

“One day, I looked around and I was lying in a bed in my parents’ apartment under two blankets, in the same pyjamas I’d been in for three days, and I was like, ‘This isn’t me’,” she told Cosmopolitan in an interview published last January 28.

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