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.