Popular reviews

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  Review by Maëva 9

  Well, I'm a black girl, I'm French and I'm from a poor neighborhood, and I never felt as happy to be this girl as when I was watching this film. Seeing people that look like my friends, like me, on the big screen,as heroines... Seeing friendship, love and most importantly youth through the faces of black girls... That's something I'll never forget. Grand, heartfelt, beautiful, Bande de Filles is maybe not the movie of your year but it's definely mine's.

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★ 16

  made boyhood look like shit tbh

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★ 6

  Verrrrry glad I ended up watching Céline Sciamma's previous work after being bowled over by Portrait Of A Lady On Fire. (And very glad I watched them with my girlfriend, whose insights were invaluable in helping me properly contextualize certain moments as the credits rolled.) Water Lilies, Tomboy, and Girlhood are all so different than POALOF but they carry similar themes of the complications of identity that can make the already-harrowing experience of adolescence even more distressing. Tomboy stands out as my favorite of the pack, but there's a confidence in the way that Sciamma directs Girlhood that makes me feel like she wanted to follow Girlhood with something different because she knew she'd mastered the genre. Such an incredible…

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  Review by Sara Clements ★★★★½ 3

  Has Rihanna seen this

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  Review by kailey ★★★★ 12

  sciamma centers the bonds of womanhood as a sacred space. they exist for each other and no one else. the protagonist of girlhood finds her identity through the touch of other girls. she is molded not by her abusive brother nor her controlling boyfriend but by the laughing women of the family she chooses to create and her younger sisters grasping hand.

  when she is with other girls- girls who have lived the same life of poverty and oppression as she has- she is free. free to dance, free to laugh, free to love, free to wear dresses and call herself beautiful. when she enters the world of men, she is cautious. she wears baggy shirts and makes her hair…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★

  Celine Sciamma is a princess from the moon sent to earth to make perfect movies. and while this is a bit less airtight than TOMBOY, it compensates with technical grace and newfound conceptual razzmatazz. day 2 of TIFF and i'm already using "razzmatazz". hold on to your butts.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  "It's not my fault."
  "Whose fault is it?"

  Yes, faceless teacher, it was your fault. She taunts and sneers and then expects Marieme to answer her when there's some suggestion of something more, deeper here, but of course, she's become untrustworthy, another authority figure who is there to hurt and punish, not to nurture or protect. In a not-really-bygone era, from this moment, Marieme would then walk into the arms of bad influences, but in this slice of European harsh reality, akin to Moodysson and Breillat in some ways, she's already under bad influences. The girl gang she joins is the most nurturing, protective, and caring force in her life, and not in an ironic way.

  This film is framed…

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  Review by claire 👁️ diane ★★★★★ 4

  i know it's been said so many times by now, but this scene is absolutely everything: the momentary crux of girls knowing they are their own lights in a cold world. jewels with fire inside. joy, celebrating themselves no matter what the world says or gives them. love for one another as radical leftist praxis. love for/or blackness. emma goldman, dancing, revolution, etc. there is more, a whole pool of gender and family disintegrating, but mostly there is choosing to keep on going. this is one of the most beautiful movies i've ever seen.

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  Review by russman ★★★½

  Probably took less than 12 years to make

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  Review by jocey coffman ★★★★ 3

  i love femininity in film when it’s portrayed how it feels, the tension of its performance, unwaveringly beating against a constant tide that presses you back. sometimes the waves are gentle and sometimes they’re relentless. i love how many times we get to see vic get her head above water. it’s an incredible act, resisting the waves.

  céline sciamma is such a sumptuous and dynamic director, every shot and every scene feels like a whole meal. i feel filled to the top.

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  Review by Genevieve Koski ★★★½

  Kinda fell apart in the final third for me, but I can't imagine loving a single scene more this year than the one set to Rihanna's "Diamonds."

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  Review by iana ★★★★

  girlhood > boyhood