Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.
Acting
Zoé Héran's performance is so natural you'll forget it's acting.
Direction
Sciamma captures childhood with terrifying, loving precision.
Cinematography
That hazy French summer light—nostalgia as a visual language.
Director
Céline Sciamma
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sciamma wrote the script in three weeks and cast Zoé Héran after seeing her at a casting call for something else entirely. The kids' football scenes are entirely unscripted.
Released the same year as France's divisive same-sex marriage debates, the film was alternately celebrated as trans representation and criticized for 'confusing' tomboyism with trans identity—debates Sciamma deliberately left open.
FR
