Pembroke College graduate and film producer Michael Berliner will be in Oxford again this week when he introduces his debut feature film, the award winning comedy Adult Life Skills, in a Q&A at the Phoenix Picturehouse

Starring Jodie Whittaker, Adult Life Skills is a quirky comedy about grief, which is being described as a career defining best for Whittaker who won the nation’s heart as another grief-stricken young woman - Beth Latimer, the Mum whose 11 year-old son is murdered in the hit TV series Broadchurch.

The film has been getting rave reviews since it was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival, founded by Robert de Niro. It had its world premiere at the festival in New York in April and bagged the prestigious Nora Ephron Prize for best female director – Michael’s director Rachel Tunnard - plus a $25,000 prize.

It landed its European premiere with a selection for the Edinburgh Film Festival last weekend.

Shot on location in Yorkshire, Adult Life Skills is a witty, moving debut which finds 29-year-old Anna (Whittaker) hiding out in her mum’s garden shed still dressing and behaving like a teenager and making home movies, using her thumbs as actors, as she used to do with Billy – her now dead twin.

She is frozen in time by grief unable to move forward despite the efforts of her Mum (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Nan (Eileen Davies), who live in the proper house at the other end of the garden, and her gobby best mate (Rachael Deering) who is real-life Whittaker’s best friend from primary school.

She’s in a dead end job and she can’t even see that the socially awkward but hilarious Brendan (Brett Goldstein) has the hots for her– even if he does try to express it by bringing her a misshapen potato as a gift which looks more like a gentleman’s personal appendage.

It’s the differently expressed grief of the little boy next door (7 year old discovery Ozzy Myers) who is fast losing his mother to a terminal illness that proves the catalyst in her life and that of the people who love her.

Michael, who graduated with a degree in experimental psychology and philosophy from Pembroke in 2007, has been making films since his school days and continued to make more while he was at Oxford. He directed musicals at Pembroke too.

On graduation he worked as a runner on major feature films before branching out to produce his own short films – his stars have included Judi Dench in the only short film she’s yet made, and Tom Hiddleston, star of Thor and the BBC’s Night Manager.

Many of his shorts have gone on to win major awards and in 2014 he was named a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International. Adult Life Skills is his first feature film.

Based on Michael’s 2015 BAFTA nominated short film Emotional Fusebox, which also starred Whittaker, Adult Life Skills is the product of three years of work combined with working part-time at the Guardian in London.

“When the short film went down well and got the BAFTA nomination, everything started to move quickly,” Michael says. “It gave our investors the confidence to back us, and we were shooting the feature version within a year of making the short”.

“We’re thrilled with the final film”, says Michael. “Women directors are vastly outnumbered by men, and twentysomething British women don’t often get to see representations of themselves on screen that are true to real life - it’s great to get some diversity on our cinema screens.

“And it’s been such a pleasant surprise that men have been responding as positively as women to the film - this isn’t a typical chick flick as the themes are universal. And it’s had audiences screaming with laughter too. It’s a feel-good film for the summer.”

You can see the trailer at www.vimeo.com/picopictures/adultlifeskillstrailer.

Michael introduces Adult Life Skills at the Phoenix Picturehouse, at the 6.15pm screening tomorrow night. www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Phoenix_Picturehouse/Whats_On