Set against a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the film traces the messy unraveling of a friendship on the brink of adulthood.
This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.
Extra Geography, the United Kingdom’s entry in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance this year, is a funny, sweet and quirky coming-of-age story about two best friends in an all-girls English boarding school. Directed by Molly Manners and written by Miriam Battye, Extra Geography offers a wholly unique angle on a well-worn subgenre, reimagining the contours of youthful exuberance and teen ambition, as well as the conflicting feelings and confusing choices we make when we’re learning what it means to grow up.
While the film’s plot doesn’t consistently hold together, the acting by newcomers Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan—who play friends Minna and Flic, respectively—is top-notch. Their chemistry and the complex social dynamics (even those invented in their own imaginations) that seem to buffet them from all sides and ultimately strain their relationship are utterly believable and engrossing.
Anxious about the prospect of becoming adults and obsessed with the idea of being “well-rounded” and taking on every opportunity that comes their way, the intellectually adept twosome determine to fall in love for their school-mandated summer project. But rather than fall in love the old-fashioned way, like finding someone with whom they’re each compatible or turning to each other (a confused mutual attraction/affection between the girls is teased a bit by the film), Flic and Minna decide to leave falling in love up to an orchestrated chance.
Spurred on by their school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Minna and Flic take inspiration from the scene where Queen Titatina accidentally falls in love with the donkey-headed Bottom through the machinations of the mischievous sprite Puck. There’s a bit of a Heavenly Creatures vibe to Minna and Flic’s friendship, with less tendency towards violence, but a similar sense of mutual prodding towards inadvisable action. So when the first person they see after determining their pact is their awkward but earnest geography teacher, Miss Delavigne, they throw themselves into their mission with cringeworthy gusto.
Both socially awkward and somewhat popular in the pecking order of their school, Minna and Flic begin the film isolated from others but uncaring because of the tight bonds of their friendship.
But as they playact falling in love with Miss Delavigne, using romance tropes they’ve only read about in literary classics to sigh and mope about, utterly confusing their unsuspecting teacher, Flic and Minna’s relationship starts to fray at the edges. And when Minna gets the part of Queen Titania in the school play and is cast opposite a charismatic actor from a nearby boy’s school, she begins to change in ways Flic can’t, or doesn’t want to, understand.
Somewhere between Flic’s jealousy and Minna’s distance, there’s a tangible and familiar pulse that draws the girls back together even as they fall apart.
The second half of Extra Geography is messier than the first, but the film presents adolescence and the complexities of shifting friendships with such discomforting clarity that it remains gripping—and the girls remain endearing interlocutors, despite their foibles—throughout.
