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.
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 combination 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 wrapped and headed to festivals! Guided by our industry mentors, we're taking it on the 2027 circuit, with sights set on top festivals at home and abroad.
Directing this film marks my directorial debut, and it's a step I've been building toward for years. My producer and I assembled an incredible team, and we could not be happier with the result. Now we want to get it in front of audiences, and it would mean the world to have you along for the ride.
The filmmakers
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.
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.
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.
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.
Elisha McCormick
Editor
Elisha has worked as an assistant editor on The Batman, The Running Man and Paddington in Peru to name a few. She has collaborated alongside some of the most celebrated and decorated editors in the industry and was recently nominated for the Michael Johns BFE award for outstanding assistant editor.
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.
Matthew Danger Lippman
Matthew Danger Lippman as THEO
Matthew Danger Lippman (MDL) is a musician, actor, and filmmaker based in NYC. He has acted in several films, among them his own short Ain't No Cure For Love: America, which screened at Whammy! and Nitehawk. He has wrapped production on FELLAS, a comedic pilot. He stars in the short Portland Is the New Portland (2024)—for which he won Best Actor at the Sherman Oaks Film Festival—as well as The Deliveryboy (Michael Bernieri), which screened at New/Next and FilmFort (2026). He stars in upcoming feature films Frogs (dir. Robin Schavoir & Matthew Schroeder), and Farewell Island (Antonio Pinto). He recently appeared on SubwayTakes.
Help make Total Slip
Every gift goes to this project through Cinematography for Actors Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
