Rooted in pre-internet Britain and the late-night world of turn-of-the-millennium television, My First Dick is a story about curiosity and girlhood bravado, starring SNL London cast member Emma Sidi.

Director’s Vision for ‘My First Dick’

This story is drawn closely from my own childhood. I was intensely curious and, once I discovered something new, I wanted to know everything about it. Looking back on my first exposure to sex and bodies felt ripe for a short film, one I hoped others would find funny and recognise in their own awkward coming-of-age moments.

The landscape around those first discoveries has changed dramatically since I was growing up. Today, curiosity can be answered instantly online, but back then information arrived unexpectedly and travelled in whispers. These fragments of knowledge felt precious and mythic, and I wanted My First Dick to evoke that specific sense of secrecy, fascination, and the strange thrill of piecing things together from scraps of pop culture.

For me, the film reflects a distinctly British experience of that era, shaped by late-night television and tabloid celebrity. Figures like Lolo Ferrari and programmes such as Eurotrash positioned themselves as gateways to answers we did not yet know how to ask.

I paid close attention to period detail, weaving in visual and tonal nods to late-nineties and early-2000s television. These included adults playing children like Kevin & Perry, withholding adult faces like Cow ’n’ Chicken, and the heightened costumes and sound design of Tracy Beaker.

With shows like Big Mouth, Pen15, and Sex Education embracing embarrassing but universal stories of bodily discovery, it feels like the right moment to revisit these formative experiences. Not just for their comedy, but for what they offer in hindsight: the reminder that we were all once baffled, curious kids trying to make sense of it all.