Unbeknownst to us, there were some new players at Berlin this year in Dan Griffiths and Rubens Aranha’s new label Rocket Releasing and it looks like they’re into our “type” of films — as they’ve made their first acquisition in Celine Sciamma’s sophomore film, Tomboy – a drama that was showered with some pretty good reviews, that picked up the Berlinale’s Teddy Jury Award and announces Sciamma breakout first hit wasn’t a fluke.
Gist: Scripted by Sciamma, Laure is 10 years old. Laure is a tomboy. On her arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy. Truth or dare? Dare. Summer becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be Michael, a boy like the others… different enough to get the attention of Lisa who falls in love with him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would never reveal her unsettling secret.
Worth Noting: Screen Daily’s say that “the politics of gender get an unusual exploration in the world of pre-teen kids in Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy, a simple conceit blessed by the same naturalistic performances and fluid camerawork that marked out her feature debut Water Lilies.”
Do We Care?: We liked Sciamma’s debut film Water Lilies – here’s our interview with her back in 2008 on her Cannes, Un Certain Regard selected debut.
