(L-R) Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear attend the “Extra Geography” Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at the Library Center Theatre on January 23, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival)
By Ramona Flume
“Celebrating the legacy of Robert Redford, this year is a discovery festival, and this is such a discovery film,” Sundance Film Festival senior programmer John Nein says during his introduction of Extra Geography at the Library Center Theatre on January 23. “I don’t know if there’s another film in the program that I get this giddy about when I talk about it.”
Giddy is a fitting word for Molly Manner’s (In My Skin, One Day) cheeky, poignant, and deeply relatable film about two high school best friends. Formative female friendships are sacred, and Manners’ spectacular feature-length debut, premiering in this year’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, reflects these dizzying, emotionally heady relationships in all their beautiful, complicated, and yes, giddy glory.
Set within the playful and visually seductive world of an elite UK boarding school, the charming coming-of-age story is a spirited portrayal of two inseparable teens, Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear) — a pair of obsessive, loving, competitive but codependent girls who hook us into their gravitational orbit from the first scene.
Although these two gifted students know nothing about real life beyond their sheltered campus, the precocious pair decides they want to “become worldly” for their self-assigned summer project, pledging to fall in love with the next person they see: their unassuming geography teacher (Festival alum Alice Englert). The absurdity of their mission is equaled only by the earnest seriousness with which they pursue it.
Tethered together, life seems simpler, but as the school year progresses, life (and matters of love) get more complicated, and the two girls are forced to face new challenges on their own terms. Big emotions are felt in between lacrosse practices and A Midsummer Night’s Dream rehearsals, and the confusing pitfalls of feminine adolescence — like being too clever for one’s own good — start to catch up with them. “I know it’s hard, but just remember that we’ve got each other,” Flic says to Minna as they struggle not only with their school assignments but their dire need to stay in sync with one another.
Manners’ own adolescent friendships in English boarding schools helped connect her with the original source material (Rose Tremain’s short story of the same name), and she felt an even deeper kinship with the characters after reading the adapted screenplay by Miriam Battye.
“It just blew my mind on the page,” Manners says about first reading Battye’s script during the post-premiere Q&A.. “She did a phenomenal job. It woke up all my own teenage experiences and what it is to go through that — growing up into a woman as a girl… It feels like we have [all of these] women who can relate very deeply to that central theme of female friendship and how formative and hard and unraveling it can be.”
“I felt like when I was 15 I was the center of the universe,” Battye says about her personal inspiration for the film’s characters. “So I wanted to do a film where they were squarely the center of the universe.”
The film’s two young breakout stars are truly the centripetal force of this film. The onscreen duo’s special dynamic goes beyond the simplest definition of friendship, mixing an uneasy, slightly charged power struggle with deeper feelings of love and obsession — which Manners says not only matched but built upon the scripted characters. “It sort of took on its own life, and I hope that comes through.”
In the post-premiere Q&A, more than one audience question probed into the complexities they noticed in Flic and Minna’s relationship.
“Are you friends in real life?” (“I immediately felt comfortable with Galaxie, and we’ve actually stayed best friends since the film,” Duggan says about the “instant bond” she enjoyed with Clear. “We also both have tuxedo cats.”
“Was it always fully friendly on set?” asked one attendee. (“That’s a juicy one,” Duggan says laughing.)
“Was there romantic chemistry? Or was I just imagining something?”
Battye took the mic to reply to that. “I think friendship is really romantic. I always have. It’s one of the most extraordinary things where you can find comfort, but also challenge yourself and find a lot of discomfort…I just think friendship is completely total. It takes over your whole thing,” she expands in reference to the film’s characters. “I think that Flic believes that as long as Minna’s light is shining on her that she’ll be completely fine, and that’s the only thing that she needs… And at that time in your life you can believe that somebody could save your life — or keep you alive.”
The Festival audience was clearly in awe of these two young leads’ debut performances, and the actors were all giggles and smiles during the Q&A session as they continued to field more questions from the crowd. “It’s just really exciting to share something that for a few months was just about us,” Clear says about making their film debut at this year’s Festival. “And now that everyone else gets to see it, it’s so exciting to see how you all relate to it and enjoy it.”
“Being here actually with Galaxie and Marnie is quite amazing,” Battye adds about the privilege to screen their independent feature at a world-renowned film festival with these two young actors. “I think they maybe don’t know how extraordinary it was, what we asked them to do, or how much we asked of them.”
