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One theme I quickly noticed with the films at the San Francisco International Film Festival was young actresses. As film making becomes more accessible and more and more female directors start putting their vision on the big screen, they are including more stories and characters like themselves. So finally, women…and now young girls are being represented in film. This is a great time to get such fresh perspectives and new ideas from movies. Here are a few standouts with young female actresses. Many of them have never even acted before!



The Sleeping Beauty (dir Catherine Breillat)

This is an interesting French film about a young girl who is cursed by a wicked witch but don’t worry…this is no Disney film. Luckily, three young fairies counter the spell but even the three of them combined are not as powerful as the old hag. The best they can do is put her to sleep for 100 years and have her awaken as a 16 year old. Why 16? Because childhood is too long anyways.


Well the young Carla Besnaïnou’s childhood is even longer. She gets randomly adopted and falls in love with her adopted brother. As he hits puberty, he vanishes and she goes on a journey to find him while running into other young princes and princesses. Finally, she’s awaken by the descendant of Peter back in the real world as she’s awake from her dream and back into reality where she must confront the modern world and problems that come along with it. It’s always difficult to work with such young actors but Carla Besnaïnou is intriguing. At times you can tell she’s just a young girl having fun in front of the camera but at other times you get an incredible performance. She’s already a diva, you can tell but she’s a joy to watch through this fanciful fairytale.



The Joy (dirs Felipe Bragança, Marina Meliande)
As we move to a bit older crowd, The Joy follows teenagers in the rough neighborhoods of Brazil. The directors set out to find nonprofessionals and they stumbled upon 15 year-old Tainá Medina who plays the lead Luiza. These kids create a fantasy dream world while battling with the harsh realities of their own lives. Luiza’s cousin is shot dead and his ghost becomes the center of attention for Luiza and her friends. But soon, he must move on and so do they.


Luiza and her friends decide to be superheroes in their dream world. They believe the apocalypse is upon them and with strength and determination, they somehow combine their imagination with the real. The movie is a bit confusing as these mystical ideas come to fruition but the ending is so rewarding that you stop yourself and want to watch the movie again from the beginning. The nonprofessionals do a great job carrying the film but I feel some more experience actors could have portrayed a lot of the scenes better. Either way, this was the North American Premiere of The Joy and definitely one to sought out.



She Monkeys (dir by Lisa Aschan)

She Monkeys has both older teenage girls and a younger sister. The movie follows a reserved Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) as she tries out for equestrian vaulting. She quickly meets Cassandra (Linda Molin) who is the top dog of the team…for now. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer they say…both Emma and Cassandra do this from the beginning but who is really using who? They become good friends but even greater competitors.


Then there’s Emma’s kid sister Sara (Isabella Lindquist) who is a bit sexually matured for her age. It’s interesting to see both Emma and Sara grow up at different stages of their lives while going through somewhat similar scenarios. It’s also interesting to see Sara fight for Emma’s attention while Cassandra takes it away. There are plenty of themes in this one including female sexuality, ruthless competition, society influences and family. It truly demonstrates that you never know what’s going through the head of some people.



Life, Above All (dir Oliver Schmitz)

This was a true surprise at the film festival for me. About a preteen dealing with numerous issues in a soweto (ghetto) of South Africa, Life, Above All is an amazing story of morals and social behavior. Khomotso Manyaka stars as Chandra and she remarkably has never acted before in her life. She was nothing less than amazing in this movie. She had to portray many emotions dealing with things like AIDS in the family, the deaths of a baby, her best friend in prostitution, as well as all of her neighbors looking with a heavy eye.


Trying to balance going to school and taking care of her younger brother and sister, you could tell that she wouldn’t be able to do it all. You would think she would fall to the same fate as her best friend or turn to some other vice, but the story is so inspiring watching Chandra deal with everything on her own while keeping her moral compass in the straightest direction. I was fascinated by this movie and hope it finds the right audiences to inspire even more people.



Another Earth (dir Mike Cahill)

A late addition to the festival was Another World which premiered at Sundance earlier in the year. This is a special movie because it was co-written and stars an up and coming star in our times, Brit Marling. Not only is she a great female actress but also a great filmmaker also being in my favorite film from the South By Southwest Film Festival, Sound of My Voice (which also premiered at Sundance). Brit has amazing performances in both of these compelling stories…she’s definitely one to watch!


This movie is about a duplicate Earth that suddenly pops into the sky. On the same night, Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) crashes into an oncoming car and kills a man’s wife and kid. After being released from jail, she tries to go apologize to the man but instead builds a strange relationship with him. At the same time, our Earth makes contact with Another Earth and there’s a theory that we all have duplicates on the other planet but the day the Earths appeared to each other, our paths separated. Rhoda enters a competition to travel to the other world…could the man’s family still be alive?

This post is part of our SFIFF coverage
Founded in 1957, the San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas. Held each spring for two weeks, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring some 150 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers in attendance and nearly two dozen awards presented for cinematic excellence. The Festival attracts an annual audience of more than 80,000.Visit an Francisco International Film Festival’s Official Website