Go For Alayna

An aspiring filmmaker’s chance to make her first film is threatened by the feminist protest of a famous actress.

Alayna is the 3rd Assistant director on the set of a reboot of the 90s thriller Basic Instinct. She’s been promised an investor for her film by Jim, her mentor and the first Assistant director. But when Gemma, the lead actress, refuses to shave her legs for the iconic “leg-crossing” scene, Jim gives Alayna an ultimatum: get Gemma to set with shaved legs or lose her investor. Though conflicted, Amirah dives into the task, resorting to every tactic she knows: reason, guilt, manipulation, force. The result is a rowdy clashing of “feminisms” as Amirah and Gemma spar – both rhetorically and physically – over the value of Gemma’s protest, revealing the holes in her tone-deaf brand of elitist feminism and airing Amirah’s deep frustrations with the industry. Even as the two women acknowledge a common enemy – the film’s production department and the patriarchal politics of the film industry as a whole – they are pit against each other, each fighting for their own version of power in the industry. Can they find a way out of this situation where they both win?