Agnes will not be all right. She will try to carry on, and life will seem to be slipping through her fingers. She will doubt herself and her talents, adopt a cat, want to set fire to the office, and do anything to go back in time. A young university lecturer, barely qualifying as a millennial, she is writing her dissertation on Virginia Woolf, and teaching. She will continue a naïve flirtation with her supervisor, and word by word, she will re-evaluate everything she once knew. A great deal of bad happens in life – and here we are with Agnes, who is trying to work out how to live after the bad has happened.

If there is one American independent film that has been talked about all year, it’s Victor’s debut – winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance. A decade ago, the series Girls (2012–2017) defined a generation of viewers, and now, a new dramedy lays claim to that status, having also screened at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. A delicate, razor-sharp piece on trauma and its aftermath – rewriting the dictionary of American mumblecore movies, stereotypes, and post-#MeToo cinema. Victor – who plays Agnes with such tenderness that you’ll accept her instantly as a sister – is joined onscreen by some of the brightest actors of the new generation: Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, and others. This is not a story of an intellectually overstimulated twenty-something – it’s an existential chapter in her life, one which, much like Woolf once did for her readers, Victor is ready to share.