Secret Lena Dunham Feature ‘Sharp Stick’ Wraps Production, Launches Sales at Virtual Berlin

From Variety Exclusive: 

“Lena Dunham just wrapped her first feature film as a writer-director in over a decade.

Sharp Stick is an indie financed by FilmNation that will screen footage for potential buyers on Tuesday out of the European Film Market during the Berlin Festival, was shot successfully in secret and in compliance with COVID-19 protocols in Los Angeles over the past months.

While plot details are under wraps, the film stars Kristine Froseth (“The Assistant,” “Looking for Alaska”), Taylour Paige (“Zola,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal (“Ford v Ferrari)”, Scott Speedman (“Best Sellers,” season three of “You”), and Dunham. The production, which boasted almost exclusively female department heads, was made through Dunham’s company Good Thing Going.

'I made my last feature film 11 years ago in my family home with just a few close friends. It’s a testament to FilmNation and my incredible producers, cast, crew and — especially — my COVID-19 compliance team that this experience felt just as intimate and creatively free,” Dunham told Variety. “This story is incredibly personal to me and a continuation of my career-long mission to create a free dialogue around the complexities of female sexuality and to turn the idea of the ‘likable’ female protagonist on its head —and you can’t do that in this business on any scale larger than your mother’s living room without forward thinking partners. I feel very lucky.' "