Du côté des petites filles

In the desolate landscapes of childhood, a cow is sacrificed. A young girl, now a woman, revisits the primitive scene from which she is still a prisoner, trying to free herself from its burden. Naive nursery rhymes turn into haunting refrains, and little girls smile despite the dull rumblings carried by the earth.

Are little girls condemned for much longer to discover, along with their power, the threat posed by their mere presence? How much longer will it be before they have the right to walk their own path, to tread the ground with determination, without looking back to see if they are being followed?

With her Brontë-esque debut, Claudie Lévesque delivers a bewitching declaration of feminine power. By resolutely siding with the little girls, she transforms the all-powerful gaze of the camera into an oblique witness, involved as if in spite of itself. From then on, it's impossible to deny what has happened; Lévesque makes the act of looking responsible. A work charged with symbolism, it joins a long line of women who have subverted the cinematic act, transforming spectacle into a magical ritual of reclaiming the world.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director