With a cheeky title playing off the sperm donation that begins its story, NATURAL SELECTION is an off-kilter comedy about a particularly unorthodox kind of family relation. Linda (Rachael Harris) and her husband have never been able to have children. So when her husband suffers a near-fatal stroke at the sperm bank where he’s secretly been donating for the last 25 years, Linda sets off to find her husband’s eldest son, confident that’s what God wants. Raymond (Matt O’Leary) may be a foul-mouthed, recently escaped ex-con as far from Linda’s devout and sheltered existence as possible, but he’s still as close to a son of her own as she has. And now he has to come home.

Winner of seven awards at the SXSW Film Festival, including Best Narrative Feature, NATURAL SELECTION might be an archetypal odd couple story, but its strong performances and bizarre relationship have already made it an audience favourite. And it doesn’t hurt that the film is willing to make “stroke” into a near-fatal double entendre, either.