For new indie darling Desiree Akhavan, the experience of growing up as an Iranian-American and a twentysomething bisexual New Yorker became the entry point into her indomitable film debut. Starring, writing and directing Appropriate Behavior, a semi-autobiographical tale of Shirin, a bisexual liberal arts grad on the pursuit of happiness, earned the feature a spot at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. Then trickled in the comparisons to Miranda July and Lena Dunham, not surprisingly after Akhavan's appearance in season four of Dunham's HBO hit Girls.

Having cut her teeth with The Slope, a shrewd web series following the relationship of two “superficial, homophobic lesbians” in Park Slope, the actor-director compares her labour of love more to Annie Hall than any Dunham-ism. A closer look at the millennial tropes peppered throughout her work – from a divorced dad who reads Vice to “Conversion Therapy,” an episode about a friend “stolen from the sisterhood” by a heterosexual relationship – reveals a comforting reminder that ageing and growing up aren’t necessarily synonymous.

Appropriate Behavior is released in cinemas on March 6 by Peccadillo Pictures.