DRINKING AND DRIVING
a film by Avalon Fast and Jillian Frank
FEATURE PRESENTATION
CANADIAN PREMIERE
MAY 28, 2026 • 7 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)
2026 / CANADA / 105 mins
Set in the summer of 2016, Drinking and Driving follows best friends Palmer and Iris (played by Vancouver-based co-directors Avalon Fast and Jillian Frank), waitresses in the small town they’ve never strayed from. They kill the rest of their time looking for the next party, drug run or drive to a lake, seeking liminal pockets of connection and relief between calls from mentally unstable boyfriends and mothers.
Drinking and Driving feels like watching gauzy, melancholy footage of memories you shouldn’t long for, but sometimes do. Fast and Frank beautifully explore the insular, impulsive, co-dependent worlds created by low-income twenty-somethings, hiding from the world together in a procession of sweaty bedrooms. Fast has described their film as a “period piece about how fucked [Jillian and I] would be if we never left,” but anyone who was in their 20s in the 2010s may also experience a disarming nostalgia for a less isolating and perpetually online time, when our desperate clawing for connection and instant gratification was messy, intimate and in-person. —Rebecca Falvey
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Avalon Fast
Avalon Fast is a writer and director from Vancouver Island, BC. In 2019, they shot their first no-budget genre film, Honeycomb, which went on to be a part of the 2022 official Slamdance festival selection and from there continued a festival tour including Boston Underground, Calgary Underground, Etheria LA, Fantasia, and many more. Fast began writing their second feature Camp in 2022 which was financed in December 2023 and shot in June of 2024. Camp is now in post-production and Avalon has begun the process of creating a new story to develop into a screenplay. Avalon refers to their genre of filmmaking as Girl Horror, as their stories focus on the eerie horrors of growing up, specifically with female influence.