Captivating girlhood at Espoo Ciné
Girls will take over Espoo Ciné's screens, when the festival's programme will show no less than 14 films that are part of the Girls series! In addition, girl power will create discussion on the festival week’s Friday, September 2, when Everyone’s Stories to the Screens and Girls' Turn discussions are held in Louhi Hall from 3:15 pm to 4:40 pm. Amongst others, Max Malka, Hanna Bergholm and Katja Kallio will be discussing there – welcome to join the discussion! More information about the discussions can be found here.
The Girls series reflects the change that is currently taking place in depicting women and in the representation of girlhood. Thus, all the films of the series show girls as active, in all their diversity. Girlhood is light, joyful and infatuated; it is pressure to perform, irritation and even social rage. Girlhood is a struggle with many contradictions, true friendship and love. So, there will be real girl power on the screens of Espoo Ciné!
Girls in the storms of social pressures
Family, school and society as a whole set their own definitions of girlhood and that is why many girls tread a fine line between the storms of social pressures. What is expected of girls and on the other hand, what is allowed to girls?
In the realistic drama A Chiara by the Italian Jonas Carpignano, the family idyll starts to fall apart when the father disappears and the 15-year-old daughter Chiara begins to investigate the case herself. Kamila Andini's breathtakingly beautiful Yuni that tells the story of 17-year old Indonesian Yuni who is faced with a difficult decision: whether to follow her parent’s wish for marriage or her own dream of university? The other film that brings you to the school world is Belgian Laura Wandel's Playground. It is a thought-provoking debut about a power play in the school yard, seen through the eyes of a younger sibling. Whereas French Emmanuelle Nicot's film Love According to Dalva is a sensitive description of 12-year-old precocious Dalva and her difficulty in accepting that her childhood was not that normal.
Rodrigo Litorriaga’s film La Francisca is a portrait of a young woman's life in northern Chile where 19-year-old Francisca struggles with the contradiction between a sense of duty and a longing for independence. The film features the actor Aatos Flores, known from the documentary The Gods of Molenbeek. Both the director and the actor will arrive at the festival!
Social media fairy tales and flip sides
Social media and the opportunities and the pressures it creates bring new dimensions to being a girl. How does publicity and new means of influencing, on the one hand, and competition and the growing pressure to be seen and heard on the other hand affect today's girlhood and the definitions of girlhood?
Kurdwin Ayub's life-flavored Sonne describes the struggles with social media and identity through three young female characters, when they become social media stars overnight with a sensational YouTube video. Dina Duman's Sisterhood, on the other hand, deals with the themes of responsibility and trust, when their friendship is put to the test through a video published on social media. Susanne Regina Meures' vivid documentary Girl Gang is an honest and addictive peek into the lives of teenage girls, which today are colored by fairy tales created by social media.
Nordic stories about girls
The girl power enchants even before the festival, when this week's Saturday, August 27, Swedish Lukas Moodysson's Fucking Åmål will be shown at the outdoor cinema. In the 90’s hit film, Elin and Agnes are frustrated and bored while looking for themselves in the fucking small Åmål – until they find each other. Nordic girlhood is also depicted in the Swedish Christoffer Sandler's film So Damn Easy Going. 18-year-old Joanna runs out of money for ADHD medication and has to find other ways to calm her mind. But then a new girl enters her class, and Joanna's whole life is messed up.
Danish Tea Lindeburg's dark feminist drama As in Heaven, which tells the story of the growth of a young girl into a woman in the Danish countryside at the end of the 19th century. The film won the most prestigious Nordic film award in Gothenburg. The girlhood of today is depicted in the most genuine way in Alli Haapasalo's sincere and funny Girl Picture – the story of the lives of three young women: a mixture of lust for life, pressure of success, and various emotions. Also Hanna Bergholm's successful psychological drama Hatching and Aleksi Salmenperä's Bubble, which is this year’s Espoo Ciné's Finnish Gala Premiere, open the girls' perspectives on domestic films.
Find more about the films of the Girls series here.
