Speak

A girl starting her first year of high school barely speaks. The whole school has turned on her for calling the police at a summer party, and nobody knows what actually happened that night. The film discloses the event late, and until then presents the silence not as a disorder but as a defence. The narrative ties her recovery not to a conversation but to months of drawing the same tree in art class. Jessica Sharzer directed, adapting Laurie Halse Anderson's young adult novel. It is Kristen Stewart's first major role, made for television. A real warning: the subject is rape and its aftermath. The event is not shown in detail but it is at the centre, and watching with school-age viewers takes preparation.