Watch The New Trailer For GIRLHOOD

“Celine Sciamma’s ‘Girlhood’ is one of the best coming of age movies in years.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire

Writer/director Céline Sciamma’s third feature film, GIRLHOOD, is a raw and tender look at a group of black high school students living in the tough banlieues of Paris, grounded by an incendiary performance from newcomer Karidja Touré.

Also starring Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Marietou Touré, watch the earlier trailer HERE and the new trailer below.

Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the “boys’ law” in the neighborhood, Shy Marieme (Karidja Touré) starts a new life after falling in with a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her style, drops out of school and starts stealing to be accepted into the gang.

When her home situation becomes unbearable, Marieme seeks solace in an older man who promises her money and protection. Realizing this sort of lifestyle will never result in the freedom and independence she truly desires, she finally decides to take matters into her own hands.

French director/writer Céline Sciamma’s debut feature “Water Lilies,” catapulted her as one of France’s most fresh and notable women directors, garnering her a César nomination for Best First Feature as well as the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc for Best First Feature awarded by the French Film Critics. Her second film, Tomboy, won the Teddy Jury Award at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival.

Sciamma says the characters in GIRLHOOD 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.

These unique protagonists carry within them the promise of depicting a realistic portrait as well as the fictional dynamic necessary for narrative tension. Although the story is generational and very much rooted in French society, it also belongs to the realm of cinematic mythology: youth subjected to societal restrictions and taboos. It is a story that is better told in France today by the young women who were brought up in these poor minority areas.”

The film is in French with English subtitles.

From Strand Releasing, GIRLHOOD is scheduled to open in New York on January 30th and in Los Angeles on February 6, 2015 followed by a national roll out.