After a torrent of hollow and unsatisfying hookups, charming New Yorker Ben (writer-director Matthew Fifer) meets and forms an unexpectedly meaningful bond with silky-voiced Sam (Sheldon D. Brown) during the muggy cicada summer of 2013. As the two men grow closer and more vulnerable, at a time when disturbing details from the trial of coach Jerry Sandusky permeate the airwaves, past traumas are reluctantly revealed and confronted, challenging their notions of romance and partnership.

For their personal and affecting debut exploring the hunger and necessity for human connection, directors Fifer and Kieran Mulcare generate a palpable sensitivity and warmth surrounding their burdened characters, whose emotionally turbulent journeys are acutely honest, complex, and sprinkled with humor. In a cast studded with scene-stealers, Ben’s eclectic support group includes Avengers’ Cobie Smulders as his free-spirited therapist, SNL’s Bowen Yang as his wisecracking confidant, and 30 Rock’s Scott Adsit as his aloof doctor.