Camp Dillo is a queer sex comedy about the chaotic, emotional, and strangely transformative world of summer camp.

The film follows Avery, a rule-following counselor who arrives at sleepaway camp desperate to fit in. Everyone around her already has a camp name, a nickname that becomes your identity for the summer, but Avery is stuck without one. When she sets out to find her name (and herself), she gets pulled into a whirlwind of counselor crushes, awkward hookups, and the kind of messy camp drama no brochure prepares you for.

As the pressure builds, Avery is forced to confront a truth many of us learn the hard way: you can’t manufacture confidence or intimacy just because everyone else seems to have it figured out. Identity (sexual, social, personal) is messy, earned, and often embarrassing.

At its core, Camp Dillo is about wanting to belong and learning that belonging doesn’t come from a name someone gives you, but from accepting who you already are.

Camp Dillo is Bottoms meets Wet Hot American Summer.

Camp Dillo is a queer, campy sex comedy grounded in awkward sincerity. The tone lives in the tension between cringe and heart, horniness and vulnerability, nostalgia and disillusionment.

Camp is a liminal space between childhood and adulthood, rules and freedom, fantasy and reality. Camp Dillo reflects that exact in-between feeling.

Tonally, the film lives in the space between sincerity and chaos. Think wet hot summer camp energy with the emotional specificity of a coming-of-age story. It’s about awkward first hookups, unbalanced friendships, power dynamics, and the quiet humiliation of trying too hard.

Camp Dillo follows Avery, a first-time counselor arriving at summer camp before the campers have even shown up, that strange, lawless window when camp staff are left alone with their nerves, their expectations, and each other. Avery is eager, well-meaning, and deeply unsure of where she fits in. At Camp Dillo, counselors earn nicknames “camp names” that signal belonging, identity, and status and Avery arrives without one, immediately marking her as an outsider.

As camp preparations unfold, Avery navigates a group of counselors who seem effortlessly comfortable in this world. Lanyard, a counselor Avery knows from the past, feels familiar but distant, and their relationship no longer provides the safety net Avery expects. Around them, camp culture hums along: inside jokes, hierarchies, hookups, and rituals that feel both ridiculous and sacred. Overseeing it all is Todd, the camp director, whose presence reinforces the unspoken rules of camp life as a counselor, rules Avery doesn’t quite know how to follow.

Avery is fixated on earning a camp name, believing it will solve her sense of displacement and finally allow her to belong. To earn her name, his must be given a name from a senior counselor, either Stick-Shift, the senior boy counselor with dreamy hair, or Racket, the senior girl counselor who is cool and collected. As the pressure mounts, Avery tries to woo them and try on different versions of herself, chasing connection and validation in increasingly uncomfortable ways.

Making Camp Dillo takes real resources, and we’re committed to spending every dollar with care. Every contribution directly supports the people and places that bring Camp Dillo to life and we’re deeply grateful for your help in making this film happen.

Roughly 50% of our budget goes toward securing our camp location, which is essential to authentically capturing the world of the film. This includes location fees, permits, and the logistics required to safely house a full cast and crew in an active camp environment.

Another 20% of the budget is dedicated to feeding our cast and crew. Camp Dillo is a physically demanding shoot with shooting on location, and we believe that people do their best work when they are well taken care of. Providing consistent, quality meals isn’t just about morale; it’s about safety, sustainability, and respect for everyone’s labor.

We’ve allocated 15% of the budget to paying our actors, who will be bringing incredible heart, humor, and vulnerability to this story. As a queer, character-driven comedy, performances are everything, and compensating our actors fairly is a core value of this production.

The final 15% goes toward Art and Production Design, which helps us build the playful, nostalgic, slightly chaotic world of Camp Dillo. From costumes and props to dressing cabins and common areas, these details are what make the camp feel lived-in, funny, and real.

This story is deeply personal. Athena grew up at camp, from age four to twenty-two, and spent those summers learning how to be a person, a co-worker, and eventually a great counselor. Camp is magical, ridiculous, emotional, and yes, a little bit horny.

The inspiration for Camp Dillo comes from that mix of nostalgia, chaos, and the longing to reinvent yourself when you feel stuck between who you were and who you hope to be. This short is based on a pilot Athena wrote about camp life, and your support for the short is the first step in bringing that world to the screen.

At its heart, Camp Dillo is about identity, queer joy, and the names we earn when we stop trying so hard to be the “perfect” version of ourselves. This film celebrates the friendships, humiliations, and tiny victories that shape young adulthood with the backdrop of late-night campfires, fluorescent cabins, and counselors making deeply questionable choices.

Thank you for helping us make a film full of heart, humor, and the kind of camp memories we never grow out of!