As a feature debut from writer-director Rachel Tunnard, Adult Life Skills focuses on Anna (Jodie Whittaker), a soon to be 30-year-old who lives in a shed in her mother’s backyard.

Both at home and working at the outdoors center in her rural English town, Anna spends much of her time making videos. Drawing faces on her thumbs, she films them asking existential questions in a spacecraft she made out of silver painted cardboard and aluminum. If not that, she’s sticking pinwheels in molehills, microwaving her wet clothes, or finding faces in unlikely places like an egg carton or a slice of bread. Ever since Anna’s twin, Billy (Edward Hogg), passed away, she chose to live in the shed. She’s been there 18 months and the shed is filled with pictures, toys, cameras, as well as Billy’s old stuff. Renewing her twin’s website where he posted the videos they made together, she’s very much settled to live in grief but her mom (Lorraine Ashbourne) puts on the pressure for her to move out or at least to consider dating the hairdresser with the mullet and Ugg Boots.

It becomes clear that Anna will not be allowed any more time to stew in her sadness as Clint (Ozzy Myers), a blunt and annoying neighborhood boy who is dressed as a cowboy, is put in Anna’s care. Like Anna, he is dealing with his own sadness when his mother falls ill and is sent to the hospital. They build a tentative friendship and eventually Clint hands her a picture he drew. But in this movie, everyone’s a little mean from the hurt and anger. Clint steals Anna’s camera and videos after he finds that his picture he gave her was ignored and stepped on. Marion, Anna’s mother, nails the shed door shut with 2x4s and cuts open the tent that Anna sets up outside. Anna even gets into a fight with her friend Fiona (Rachael Deering) who calls her out for being selfish. In the end, there is no moment of quiet closure for Anna that allows her to resolve her grief. Her twin’s website has been shut down because of an expired credit card and the molehills where she stuck pinwheels have been sectioned off so that the moles can be killed by pest control. When she finally finds Clint, who has run away, she asks him to blow up her shed, not because she’s ready to move on but because she’ll ruin everything if she doesn’t.

A lot of the film focuses on Anna rejecting everyone’s attempt to pull her out of her grief but one of the more touching moments is a small scene with Clint. To fit with his cowboy costume, Anna gives Clint a leather holster that her grandmother made for him. It brings up a point that maybe the best we can do in moments like this is to give and care for each other. As her best friend had brought up, other people are unhappy too. Clint. Marion. The grandmother. They’re all dealing with their own issues and trying to live their life too.

There is a moment after her meltdown that Anna asks Brendan (Brett Goldstein), an awkward writer who’s interested in her, whether she is still a twin if her twin is dead. It’s one of the few heartfelt moments in the film. Yet Adult Life Skills doesn’t delve too deep into the question or its answer. Perhaps it is, for Anna’s sake, not something she needs to answer. Instead of wallowing too deep in these sort of questions, the best thing to do is to move on, as Anna does with the help of her friends and family.

‘Adult Life Skills’ is not rated. 96 minutes. Opening at the Arena Cinelounge this Friday.