Olivia Munn stars in writer-director Justine Bateman’s feature debut, a formally daring, psychologically incisive portrait of a woman at a crossroads. Though she is best known as an actor, Justine Bateman’s feature debut as writer-director immediately distinguishes her as an indie auteur with an arrestingly original vision. At once formally daring and psychologically incisive, Violet is a highly personal — but also profoundly relatable — portrait of a woman at a crossroads.

A Los Angeles–based film executive, Violet (Olivia Munn) has worked arduously to gain status in an industry still dominated by older white men, often at the expense of her dignity and taste. Nowhere is this more apparent than in her relationship to her boss (Dennis Boutsikaris), who exerts his power by regularly humiliating her in front of clients. Violet presents as confident, chilly, even callous, but inside her a cauldron of desperate anxieties is on the brink of boiling over.