“Sometimes it feels like the world’s gone deaf — I can’t tell if they can’t hear me or they’re ignoring me,” says Karen Gillan in the first trailer for her feature directorial debut, “The Party’s Just Beginning.” The “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” actress stars in the coming-of-age drama and wrote its script. The spot sees Liusaidh (Gillan) spiraling out of control and self-medicating with alcohol, sex, and food. Her friends seem more concerned about her “puffy” face and the fact that the bags under her eyes are “starting to dominate,” and Liusaidh’s mother thinks her daughter’s biggest problem is that she’s single. They don’t seem to realize the extent of her suffering.

Liusaidh is mourning her best friend, whom she lost to suicide. Resentful about having been left behind, she’s unable to move on.

“I wasn’t always like this,” she tells a new love interest (Lee Pace) after he — quite rightly — calls her a “mess.”

Gillan’s previous credits as a writer-director include shorts “Conventional” and “Coward.”

“We need more of you. So go for it!” the “Guardians of the Galaxy” star urged when we asked her advice for other female filmmakers. “And if you have to be disagreeable, then be disagreeable,” she emphasized. “Some of us, as women, have been conditioned to be agreeable. Sometimes even rewarded for it. But that’s not how we are going to get on in this field. I pride myself in always being kind, and I treat every person I meet with the same amount of respect. But if don’t agree with something, I’m not going to go along with it.”

“The Party’s Just Beginning” made its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at Tribeca. It hits select theaters December 7 and launches on VOD December 11. The trailer premiered on Entertainment Weekly. Head over to EW to learn about Gillan’s inspiration for “The Party’s Just Beginning.”