Written and directed by Michael Aronson, Nutcracker is a daring and imaginative film about a sexually curious young girl who seeks validation in an environment affected by rape culture.

Ebboney Wilson plays main character Shelly — “an imaginative teenaged clerk struggling to unite her stimulating inner life with the slow grind of her retail job—seeks the validation of her coworkers who play the “rape game.” To measure her sense of self worth, Shelly succumbs to the lure of this brazenly toxic culture, and finds that the price of fitting in is more than she bargained for.”

The short film is an adaptation of African-American author Tia Clark’s short story of the same name, which featured in the the Spring 2014, Volume 17, Issue 57, of American Short Fiction. Watch Nutcracker, in its entirety, below.