Little Trouble Girls

Urška Djukić's first feature begins with sixteen-year-old Lucia joining her Catholic school's girls' choir. Withdrawn by nature, Lucia becomes friends with Ana-Maria, one of its popular, easy-going members. When they go on a choir retreat, her attraction to a restoration worker at the building both damages that friendship and puts her at odds with her faith. The film builds adolescent awakening tangled with shame, sin and guilt, and tells it without explanation, largely through looks and sound. The choir rehearsals are its most intense passages, making plain that a voice sung in unison is both a form of belonging and a form of control. It opened the newly created Perspectives competition at the Berlin Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI prize. The title comes from a Sonic Youth song. Who it's for: viewers who like quiet, sensory European films about adolescence. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a clear plot and a story that states itself.