While Sundance Film Festival is perhaps most associated with the coming-of-age film, one of a different variety arrived at the festival this year. Girls Will Be Girls follows a young Indian girl who begins a romance with her boarding school classmate which puts her at odds with her mother. The film is the directorial debut of Shuchi Talati and the feature acting debut of Preeti Panigrahi who stars as Mira, the model student whose romance challenges her family and school’s expectations of her.
The film was praised in John Fink’s review as a “nuanced, interesting portrait of a 16-year-old girl coming to terms with a sexual awakening and her young mother, who never quite had the chance to experience one either.” Girls Will Be Girls will premiere on September 13 at Film Forum in New York City before expanding nationally.
Here’s the synopsis: “A model student, 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi in a radiant debut performance) is the first-ever female prefect in charge of enforcing rules at a straitlaced Indian boarding school in the Himalayas. Despite her ambition and primness, she can’t help but fall for new student Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), and steals away with him to flirt and stargaze. With frankness and sensitivity, writer-director Shuchi Talati uncovers the contradictory layers of Mira’s sexual awakening, the complicated feelings triggered in her protective, unfulfilled mother, and the school’s lax penalties for boys’ transgressive behavior.”
See the trailer below.
The post Girls Will Be Girls Trailer: Sundance Highlight Arrives This September first appeared on The Film Stage.
