Summer In The Shade – Watch the trailer for the dark coming-of-age drama

Central City Media, in association with The Road, Light Green Cabbage, Incline Productions and Cinetura have announced the release date of their dark coming-of-age drama, Summer In The Shade. The film, directed by Alice Millar and starring Niamh Walter, Nyobi Hendry and Rebecca Palmer, will be released across all major digital platforms from 20th June.

Summer, 1997. Twelve-year-old Grace and eleven-year-old Asta have been friends for as long as they can remember. When her father suddenly leaves, Grace’s fascination with religion and the supernatural becomes an obsession. At the end of the school holidays the girls go to stay in a cottage in the Cornish countryside with Asta’s bohemian mum, Kate. There, troubled Grace is forced to confront her demons…

Director Alice Millar, talking about the film said, “Summer In The Shade is an exploration into the trauma of puberty and the experience of self-disgust experienced by most women as they deal with changing from a little girl to a sexualized being. Universally this is a diffcult time and for many, is accompanied by deep psychological fear and existential revulsion. The body swells and starts to bleed.

Often, men look at you with hunger rather than affection and women with jealousy rather than protection in their eyes. In the vivid imagination of our protagonist Grace, who is also dealing with her father abandoning her family for the cliche of a younger woman, these themes lead her to see religion as a comfort. However the religion she finds merely reinforces a sense of shame and guilt, as well as igniting fears of supernatural and biblical terrors, demons, original sin and the concept of participating in evil. I believe this experience is fairly universal, and it is important that it is dealt with and acknowledged in the cultural consciousness, as the ramifications of this time can affect an entire life.”

Summer In The Shade will be available on Digital Download from 20th June.