Film
Astrid
A fifteen-minute Swedish film about an eleven-year-old girl's afternoon of small rebellion in town with friends. It's a precise, unsentimental portrait of that moment when childhood independence collides with real consequence. Quietly devastating, shot with unflinching clarity. For anyone who remembers being young and finding out the world doesn't negotiate.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like small, observant portraits of childhood where a single afternoon carries the weight of a whole growing-up, and you don't need the plot to explain itself.
Skip it if you need broad context or a fully built world, because fifteen minutes gives little room for backstory and the frame stays narrow throughout.
What it asks of you: Little more than a quarter of an hour, it moves in short unhurried stretches, watching closely rather than explaining, and it trusts your attention to fill the gaps.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Moonlight2016
Three chapters of a boy becoming a man, each one a complete world. Shot with such tenderness and visual poetry that silence becomes articulate. About identity, desire, and the people who teach us who we are.
But Deliberately paced and elliptical; it will not spell anything out for you. Requires patience and emotional availability.
The Babadook2014
An Australian horror film that uses the monster as a lens for grief and maternal exhaustion. Taut, inventive, visually stunning, and genuinely unsettling without relying on jump scares. One of the best films about motherhood ever made.
But The horror elements are real and disturbing. Some will find it bleak rather than cathartic.
Céline and Julie Go Boating1974
Two women slip in and out of a mysterious house, gradually uncovering its secrets through playful investigation. Magical, strange, funny, endlessly inventive. A film that trusts your intelligence completely and rewards repeat watching.
But Nearly three hours long and structurally unconventional. It moves at its own pace and will feel willfully obscure if you're not in the mood.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Astrid
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Come and See1985
Both use a child protagonist to examine the collision between interior world and external cruelty. Both understand that growing up is partly about things breaking inside you that don't visibly show.
A Soviet film about a boy conscripted into the Red Army during WWII, watching his childhood annihilate in real time. The most devastating film about war ever made, and about the moment innocence breaks. Essential cinema, but prepare yourself.
But Graphically violent, deeply traumatic, and relentless in its refusal to look away. This is not entertainment; it's an ordeal in the best and worst sense.
More like this (8)
Let the Right One In2008
A Swedish vampire film about friendship, loneliness, and the way children can love without hesitation. Achingly beautiful, genuinely frightening, and deeply humane. The cinematography alone is worth the price of admission.
But Bleak and violent in moments. The slow burn will frustrate anyone looking for conventional scares or narrative momentum.
The Florida Project2017
Children playing in the shadow of poverty, seen with absolute clarity and deep love. Handheld, sun-soaked, anarchic. Captures childhood's obliviousness to disaster with heartbreaking precision while never condescending to its characters.
But No plot in the traditional sense. Painful to watch if you're looking for reassurance or neat resolutions.
Boyhood2014
Twelve years of filming the same actor growing up, in real time. A radical act of cinema that lets you feel duration the way you feel it in actual life. Ordinary and extraordinary at once, like memory itself.
But Nearly three hours of accumulated small moments. If you need incident to stay engaged, this will feel formless and slow.
A Ghost Story2017
A man in a white sheet haunts the house where he died, watching time pass. Achingly poetic meditation on grief, legacy, and impermanence. Formally adventurous and emotionally devastating in equal measure.
But Structurally strange and tonally abstract. The central conceit might seem precious or silly rather than profound, depending on your mood.
Petite Maman2021
A girl meets her mother as a child in the woods and they become friends for a summer. Magical realism handled with such grace and specificity that the impossible feels inevitable. About motherhood, loss, and time collapsing.
But Depends entirely on emotional surrender; the premise requires you to meet it halfway. Very gentle, which some will find too delicate.
Under the Skin2014
Scarlett Johansson as an alien entity in Glasgow, picking up men in a van. Hypnotic, strange, deliberately opaque. Less science fiction than mood poem about incomprehension and the unknowable.
But Deliberately obscure with minimal dialogue or explanation. Long stretches of ambiguity will feel pretentious or boring depending on tolerance for the experimental.
Marnie1964
Both explore the gap between what a person appears to be and what they actually need. Both show damage manifesting as behaviour, and behaviour as a kind of cry for help.
Hitchcock's strange masterpiece about a compulsive liar and thief who cannot stop sabotaging her own attempts at normalcy. Taut psychological thriller with visual ingenuity and genuine human tragedy underneath. One of his most underrated films.
But The ending feels stagey and the psychoanalysis dated. Hitchcock's cool style can feel distant when the film needs warmth most.
Pan's Labyrinth2006
Both use the point of view of a young girl to show how the world's darkness enters childhood. Both understand that growing up is a story of losing protection and learning what danger actually means.
A girl in Franco's Spain finds a faun offering escape through a magical labyrinth, but the film keeps cutting back to the real horror happening around her. Gorgeous, terrifying, about the stories we tell ourselves to survive. Spanish cinema at its most visionary.
But The violence is real and directed at children. The fantasy elements are beautiful but cannot soften the brutality of the historical context.
People
Cast
Frida ArgentoAstrid
Vera VitaliMother- Louise LöwenbergPetshop employee
Directing
- Fijona JonuziDirector
Writing
- Fijona JonuziWriter