If Man is in any way a reflection of reality, then parents, you might want to lock up your daughters.

The film, which is screening in the Shorts Program III, tells a story of two hormonally charged teenage sisters. The older one meets a young man on the Internet and agrees to hook up with him in an abandoned cabin in the woods. The younger secretly follows her there. What ensues is a coming-of-age story that will make any former teenager cringe with the memory of their “first time.”

“I wanted to make a film that I thought rang true to the adolescent experience, that really tumultuous time,” explained filmmaker Myna Joseph. “Man is a pretty unromantic take on sexuality and sexual exploration, I guess.”

“I was interested in the push and pull that happens in adolescence,” she added. “You want to be an adult, but you want to be a kid, you want to be involved in sex but you’re afraid of it, you want to be included but you want to exclude people. So there’s all this stuff going on—it’s this constant dynamic that interests me.”

The motif of sisters also interests her. “I’m one of three sisters,” she revealed. “I tend to write a lot about families and siblings—family dynamics. These two sisters have sort of been with me for a while.” Or at least since doing her M.F.A. at Columbia Film School: The recent graduate says that the two sisters in Man actually originated from a feature screenplay she wrote at school.

Man may be her first film at the Sundance Film Festival, but she has lots of people to turn to for advice on how to navigate the Festival. Her editor Felipe Barbosa had a short film at Sundance last year called Salt Kiss. “He’s a good friend of mine from Columbia,” she said. “He and I were in almost every directing class together—it’s like we’ve come of age together as directors. And my film has sex in it so I knew he would love cutting it—he is the best editor of sex. We had a great time cutting it.”

“[Felipe and I] also had the same DP, Chris Teague. And Chris also shot my boyfriend John Magary’s film, The Second Line [screening in Shorts Program I], which is also at the Festival.”

This confluence of creative talents is exactly what the former biology major was looking for in a grad school experience. “Biology just didn’t work out for me,” she admitted. “I discovered film sort of late. I took a summer class in Super 8 filmmaking and it was like, ‘Oh my god, what have I been doing?’ I was a late bloomer.”

“I went to film school to develop material but also to meet people and we’ve been very lucky to have a close-knit group of people to work together,” Myna said. “I can’t imagine making films without having gone to Columbia.... On the other hand, you end up with the value of a house worth of debt, so there is that.”