TOTAL SLIP
Short Film
Project Type: Short Film
Project Status: Pre-Production
Writer and Director: Kiera Sky Torpie
Producer: Allison Buaas
Director of Photography: Molly Scotti
Intimacy Coordinator: Joey Massa
Art Director: Elia Tzoukermann
1st AD: Mak Shealy
LOGLINE
When Alma discovers her tampon is stuck on the same night she's dumping her boyfriend, she must find the strength to get it (and the truth) out safely.
SYNOPSIS
How do you say goodbye to the one who's seen you stripped down (literally) and loved you all the same?
Alma and Theo have been going all night - and not in a fun way. After hours of breaking up, Alma goes to the bathroom. She washes her face, dries her eyes, goes to remove her tampon only - it's stuck. So, she resorts to old habit. She returns to her bedroom to ask her now-ex-boyfriend for help.
What follows is a sloppy removal process: unsexy sex positions, cyclical tension and release, tired bickering, all building to the climactic moment where Alma must face the real reason she’s ending things. She’s not broken, she’s not incapable of love - she just doesn’t like him enough. It's over.
To make matters worse, Theo’s efforts have backfired, shooting the tampon (and Alma’s confidence) deeper within. All hope is lost until Alma notices a painting on her wall, an abstract image of mother and baby, and she remembers she can push.
In a ridiculous faux-birth-giving sequence, Alma pushes out her tampon, and she and Theo revel in a final ecstasy - a closeness that will disappear at first light.
TOTAL SLIP is a risqué cracking open of that moment at the end of a relationship, when you realize the person with whom you share the deepest intimacy will become like a stranger the next morning. Unapologetic in its feminine gaze, it invites audiences to crack open the closed door and see what happens when we can't find the string.
MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT
TOTAL SLIP began as a story our Art Director told me on an early morning bus tour in Ireland. As Elia recounted each shocking detail, we found ourselves laughing and crying simultaneously - overwhelmed with the absurdity, the love, and the grief at its core. In that moment I recognized what draws me to every story I write: the amalgam of humor and heartbreak that sits inside of loss.
Storytelling has always been the place I go to make sense of grief, particularly for women at the point of emotional rupture. If the real world makes it impossible for us to unravel, then my stories are a place where we can, where our hidden pain becomes visible enough to reshape the world around us. What excites me most about TOTAL SLIP is that something so typically private - menstruation - becomes the entry point to explore an experience that is so universal.
TOTAL SLIP is in pre-production! As we move toward our 2-day shoot in September, we'll secure our NY location and fine-tune our creative vision. After wrap, we'll go straight into post-production. With the help of our industry mentors, we've built an ambitious distribution strategy, targeting key domestic and international festivals along the 2027 circuit.
Directing this film marks my cinematic debut, and it's a step I've been building toward for years. My producer and I have assembled an incredible team, and it would mean the world to have you involved in bringing this story to life.
You can help by pledging to donate to our Seed&Spark campaign! We have to raise at least 80% of the goal to collect funds, so every contribution truly counts.
Whether or not you're able to donate, there are ways you can support us free-of-charge:
"Follow” our Seed&Spark campaign at the top of the project page to boost its visibility, and share it with the people in your life. Once we hit 250 “followers,” we’ll start unlocking filmmaker discounts!
“Follow” @totalslipmovie on Instagram and engage with our posts.
"Share" this fundraiser with your network and anyone you think might be interested in supporting women-led cinema!
Thank you so much for your support!
- Writer-Director, Kiera Sky Torpie
Meet The Filmmakers
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Allison Buaas
Producer
Allison Buaas is an LA-based producer. She currently serves as the Film Coordinator at LuckyChap, where she started as the assistant to Co-Founder, Josey McNamara. In her role, she supports the development and production of feature films and works closely with creative teams across the company’s slate, helping to bring distinctive filmmaker-driven stories to the screen.
Prior to joining LuckyChap, Buaas earned a BA from The University of Southern California and gained experience in talent representation at Verve. Her recent credits include Saltburn (2023) and Wuthering Heights (2026). -
Kiera Sky Torpie
Writer/Director
Kiera Sky Torpie is a writer-director from New York whose work centers on intimate, female-driven stories with a darkly comedic tone.
While living in Los Angeles, she co-wrote, produced, and voice-acted in the animated sketch series, “Olive and Sunset,” which ran for two seasons on TikTok and Vimeo.
In 2022, her dark comedy, “Sunny Makes a Scene,” about a teenager confronting her father's overdose, premiered at the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh. In May 2024, she produced a reading of the play at the Irish Arts Center in New York City.
She is a recipient of the US-Ireland Alliance Scholarship and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. She currently lives in London after spending the last 18 months in Belfast developing BAFTA-winning writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s upcoming feature, Bad Bridgets.
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Molly Scotti
Director of Photography
Molly Scotti is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, cinematographer, and photographer. A 2022 graduate of Wesleyan University’s film program, her short film “The Christening” won multiple awards at the Hollywood Blood Horror Festival and the Pittsburgh Moving Picture Festival’s Thriller Picture Show. “The Christening” had its international premiere at Final Girls Berlin in 2023. Her most recent short, Let’s Eat Frank, is currently in post-production.
Molly’s work as a director of photography has been screened at South by Southwest, Filmfest München, New/Next Film Festival, and beyond.
In addition to her film work, Molly teaches classes at the documentary film community DCTV in Chinatown and is a regular volunteer at the nonprofit film school and community dark room Mono No Aware.
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Joey Massa
Intimacy Coordinator
Joey is an experienced intimacy coordinator for television, film, and theater. They started training with Theatrical Intimacy Education in 2019 and now serve as a Guiding Faculty member with the organization, where they develop and facilitate new workshops. Television credits include Law & Order: SVU (NBC), The Equalizer (CBS), Wu-Tang: An American Saga (Hulu), A League of Their Own (Amazon Studios), and Harlem (Amazon Studios). Their film work includes Plainclothes (Sundance 2025), Babes, Between the Temples, Tendaberry, and more. Joey has a strong background in sexual violence prevention and education as well as work surrounding supporting survivors of violence. They are a skilled facilitator and educator and have volunteered for over five years as a sexual assault and domestic violence crisis advocate in ERs across NYC. -
Elia Tzoukermann
Art Director
Elia Tzoukermann is a multi-media artist, filmmaker, photographer, and doula based in Seattle. Her 2020 short film, ‘The 5th Day of the Fourth Month in the Twentieth Year' premiered at the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival. In her work, she holds space for thresholds - birth, loss, and transformation - and approaches these experiences collaboratively with the people she supports. Analog photography is an extension of this practice, allowing her to witness these shifts while weaving her art and care work together. When she’s not capturing images, she’s designing farm to table dinner events at Landhaus in Seattle. 'Total Slip' is inspired by her true story.
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Mak Shealy
1st AD
Mak Shealy (she/they) is a director, writer, and actor originally from South Carolina, now based between Los Angeles and New York. Across film, theater, and prose, they tell stories about identity, belonging, and transformation, often through a blend of comedy, heart, and a touch of the surreal.
Drawn to characters in moments of transition, Mak is interested in the experiences that change us: the relationships we build, the losses we endure, and the unexpected ways we find ourselves again. Whether crafting intimate dramas, offbeat comedies, or genre-bending worlds, she creates stories that invite audiences to laugh, reflect, and feel seen.
Their current work includes the film jacob, side smirk, nose kiss (DWF:LA 2026), alongside two short films and a mockumentary in post-production. Her debut novel, Noodle Bug, is currently seeking publication.
Meet The Cast
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Olive Schettino
Olive Schettino as ALMA
Olive is a musician, actor, film and theatre-maker from New York. She holds a BFA in musical theatre performance from the Boston Conservatory.
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Kyle Chase
Kyle Chase as THEO
Kyle is a NYC-based actor, comedian, and digital content creator who has built a cult following for his @kylefornow and @veronikaiscool sketch videos and his many collaborations with director Michael Rees. Recent film credits include Guzzle Buddies and Recreational Social Interaction.
Your Help
TOTAL SLIP is a fiscally sponsored project of Cinematography for Actors, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your donation will be tax-deductible!