Table of Contents
Shawna, Sabrina, and Frankie have been best friends since middle school. Now they're high school seniors with fake IDs and a carefully planned adventure ahead of them β until New York throws obstacle after obstacle their way. GROWN, written and directed by Audrey Cicerello, treats that chaos as a rite of passage, using the city itself as a fourth character.
A New York City native now based in Los Angeles, Cicerello built GROWN from a vast array of personal experiences. The result has already earned the Neighborhood Award at the Lower East Side Film Festival and screened at Nantucket, Rooftop Films NYC, and Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, and it lands at HollyShorts with a rare balance: a film about queer female friendship that keeps joy at the forefront.
Key Takeaways
- GROWN juxtaposes female queerness and female friendship to see where complications arise, refusing the familiar register of queer trauma.
- Shot entirely on location, run-and-gun, the film lets New York's unplanned chaos become part of the story.
- Cicerello is developing GROWN into a feature, with audience reactions on the festival circuit directly shaping the expanded script.
A conversation with the filmmaker about the city, the collaboration, and what she wants audiences to carry out of the theater.
Interview
What drew you to make this film, and why this story, why now?
In developing GROWN, I delved into a vast array of personal experiences growing up in New York City. Particularly, I wanted to capture the feeling that coming of age within it is a propelled experience. Being young and awkward in such a chaotic, vibrant, "grown-up" environment is challenging, yet thrilling.
I am inspired by the growing tide of queer representation in cinema, centering our stories and confronting our plotlines. In GROWN, I have sought to refrain from the trauma and heartbreak of being queer, and instead juxtapose two often joyful experiences: female queerness and female friendship, to see where complications arise. It was important to me that friendship and coming of age were the true themes of this film.
Parts of myself are spread across all three of the girls, as I have been each of them at some point or another. Teen friendships are nearly impossible to navigate, even without the introduction of a romantic element. Confronting childhood innocence with the looming and exciting threat of adulthood allows the characters to capture a uniquely chaotic and hopeful moment.
What surprised you most about the filmmaking process, including any moment on set that changed how you saw the story?
I always knew that shooting run-and-gun in New York City was the only way to make this film, but I didn't realize how much of an advantage that would give us. The ability to capture real energy, and even real people in unplanned moments, helped turn the city itself into a character in the story. We shot entirely on location, and when logistics forced us to problem-solve and change plans on the fly, we ended up capturing a genuine chaos on camera that no amount of planning could have staged.
What moment in the film feels most like you, or like something only you could have made?
The dynamic between the three leads in GROWN is one I've experienced in different iterations throughout my own life. There's a nuance to female friendships, especially among queer women, that I wanted to get right. My actresses and I explored our own relationship dynamics in prep to capture something authentic, something close to what a real teenage girl actually goes through. In a lot of ways, it feels like a personal extension of myself.
What was the hardest creative decision you made while making the film?
Writing the script meant confronting the classic "kill your darlings" conundrum. As with every short, there's a challenge in telling the story you want to tell within tight time constraints. I had to cut a lot of beats I wanted to show on screen, but in the end, for the sake of pace, I felt we were left with the best of the journey.
What tool, technique, or mindset shift helped most during production?
Shooting anything is such a team effort. More than anything I've worked on before, this process let me fully lean into collaboration, whether that meant letting my DP shape a scene or taking an on-the-fly suggestion from my first AD. Shooting overnights in the city got chaotic at times, and it became a real lesson in leadership, in how to make everyone's voice feel heard in the middle of a hectic environment. I truly embrace that as part of the job as a director.
How does your film fit within, or push the boundaries of, its genre?
GROWN doesn't fit exclusively into one genre, and that's one of my favorite elements of the project. I connect emotionally to the coming-of-age structure, but I'm also deeply inspired by elements of thrillers, like Scorsese's After Hours or the Safdies' Good Time, to emphasize the inherent anxiety of New York. Comedy is central to GROWN, just as it was in my own story. I found laughter to be my greatest weapon in the constant plight of adolescence, filled with scenes of crippling heartbreak and utter embarrassment. All of these notes combine to make GROWN what it is.
What do you hope audiences take away from this film, and where does it go next?
I hope the audience sees themselves in one of the characters and walks away understanding that the pressure to always be moving forward, advancing, proving yourself, isn't as important as being where your feet are and enjoying the present moment with the people around you, especially the ones you love.
I'm in the process of turning GROWN into a feature film. Right now we're in the midst of the festival circuit, and after that we plan to release the short on streaming. It's been fascinating watching the reaction to this film and seeing how much people connect to it, especially because that reaction is directly shaping the script for the feature. Having GROWN play at HollyShorts β in the Chinese Theatre no less β means a ton. I'm endlessly inspired by my filmmaking peers, and I'm honored to share this project with the community I've built here over the last couple of years.
Main Cast & Crew
- Shawna β Olivia Welch
- Sabrina β Sydney Leiser
- Frankie β Savy Jackson
- Writer/Director β Audrey Cicerello
- Co-Producer β Janet Valentina Manina
- Co-Producer β Jackson Prince
- Editor β Willa Troy
- Colorist β Brian Charles
- Sound Designer/Composer β Matthew Rollins
- Director of Photography β Kalea Calloway
Filmmaker Opportunities
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