Trailer: Beanie Feldstein in ‘How to Build a Girl’

Based on the bestselling novel by Caitlyn Moran (who also wrote the screenplay), How to Build a Girl follows Johana Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein) a bright, quirky, 16-year-old who uses her colorful imagination to regularly escape her humdrum life in Wolverhampton and live out her creative fantasies.

Desperate to break free from the overcrowded flat she shares with her four brothers and eccentric parents, she submits an earnestly penned and off-beat music review to a group of self-important indie rock critics at a weekly magazine. Despite being brushed off initially, Johana clamors to the top of the 90s rock music scene by reinventing herself as Dolly Wilde – a venerable, impossible-to-please music critic with an insatiable lust for fame, fortune, and men. It isn’t long before the rapid pace at which Johana’s life is changing becomes overwhelming and she runs face-first into a devastatingly real, existential crisis: Is this the type of girl she wants to become? Or does she need to start over and build again from the ground up?

How to Build a Girl is directed by Coky Giedroyć and produced by Debra Hayward, Alison Owen, Bonnie Chance-Roberts. It co-stars Alfie Allen, Paddy Considine, Chris O’Dowd and Emma Thompson.

IFC Films will release How to Build a Girl in theaters and on demand May 8, 2020. Here is your first look.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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