Bande de filles

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.
“The characters themselves sparked the project. The teenage girls that I would regularly see hanging out in the vicinity of Paris’ Les Halles shopping center, or in the metro, sometimes in Gare du Nord train station: always in a gang, loud, lively, dancing. Wanting to delve deeper, I sought out their blogs and came to be fascinated by their esthetics, styles and poses. Beyond their irresistible energy, their profiles reflect all the themes that are at the heart of my ongoing work as a filmmaker: the construction of a feminine identity within the framework of social pressure, restrictions and taboos, of which the question of plays on image and identity are central. It was my desire to continue working around the question of youth and initiatory narratives, but in a contemporary corollary, anchored in the political reality of France today.” (Céline Sciamma)