Country: USA, Italy
Year: 2025
Duration: 89'
Partying is the only thing Amber, Lavinia, Zosia, Lola, and Maddy want on their girls-trip getaway to Joshua Tree. These baddies are up for booze, boys, and wild times on a party boat, but there’s also Amber’s ex aboard. When she sees him with another girl, she impulsively hooks up with cutie Tye. But after her friends leave her alone, Tye pushes past her boundaries. Fighting him off, she tries to numb the trauma by partying even harder, but her rage boils over and she violently confronts Tye. The incident gets the girl gang kicked off the boat, and on their way to the rental, they’re harassed by hostile locals. Used to shaking off chaos – It’s what they’ve always been taught to do – the girls vow to have the best time, but Amber’s experience with Tye haunts her even through the molly and vodka. To make matters worse, a group of men get aggressive with them at a concert, and new hook-ups are foiled by Amber’s flashbacks.
Biography
film director
Izabel Pakzad
(New York) is an Iranian-Greek American filmmaker, writer, and actress. Her short film Don’t Worry, It’s Gonna Be OK – which she wrote, directed, and starred in – was an official selection at the Oscar-qualifying Raindance Film Festival and HollyShorts, and won Best Short Film at the L.A. Film Festival. She later produced and played a leading role in the independent feature Thena, which had its world premiere at the Taormina Film Festival in June. Most recently, she wrote and directed Find Your Friends, her debut feature film, inspired by the true events of a girls’ trip gone terribly wrong.
FILMOGRAFIA
Don’t Worry, It’s Gonna Be OK (cm, 2022), Find Your Friends (2025).
Declaration
film director
“I had the idea to write a thriller set in Joshua Tree after my own real-life experience of being harassed and then chased by a group of men when I was there with my best friends. It was terrifying, and the experience really rattled me – it forced me to confront just how exposed I am as a woman in certain situations. This experience inspired me to dig deeper, and in writing this script, I saw the story as an opportunity to explore feminism and the patriarchy in an honest, brutal, and unflinching way.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY: Izabel Pakzad. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Tim Curtin. FILM EDITING: Maxime Pozzi-Garcia. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Kathrin Eder, Melisa Jusufi. COSTUME DESIGN: Oretta Corbelli, David Page. MUSIC: Ben Frost. SOUND: Davide Favargiotti, Simone Usai. CAST: Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Zion Moreno, Sophia Ali, Blaine Kern III. PRODUZIONE: Monika Bacardi, Allison Friedman, Andrea Iervolino, Luca Matrundola, Izabel Pakzad, Gary Michael Walters for Welcome to Italy in association with WWPS, Walers Media Group, Angry Cloud, 828 Productions.
