Film

Girlhood

Name: Girlhood
Genre: Drama
Released: 2014
Cast: Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Mariétou Touré, Idrissa Diabaté

Coming-of-age

Girlhood follows Marieme, a Parisian teenager caught between family pressure and neighbourhood survival, as she reinvents herself through a girl gang. Shot in luminous black-and-white, it's a sensory, music-driven portrait of adolescent hunger for belonging and agency. Raw, tender, unflinching—a film about what freedom looks like when your options are genuinely constrained.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a patient, observant portrait of a young woman carving out her identity among friends, where the pleasure lies in quiet textures, close-up faces and a score that carries feeling more than plot.

Skip it if you need brisk momentum or a clear through-line, since it drifts in episodes and lingers on moods more than on events.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a rhythm of hushed scenes and sudden bursts of energy, with a runtime just under two hours and little explanation offered along the way.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Boyz n the Hood1991

Cube's masterpiece about young Black men navigating systemic constraint and gang life in LA. Structured similarly around mentorship, loyalty, and the brutal arithmetic of limited choices. Humanises characters the world dismisses.

But Thirty years old and shot in a different idiom; the pacing is deliberate rather than rhythmic, which will feel slower if you come from Girlhood's aesthetic.

The Fits2016

Dancer Royalty Hicks discovers an epidemic of convulsive dancing in a Cincinnati community centre. Like Girlhood, it's a visual poem about female bodies claiming space and a girl seeking belonging through a transformative group. Haunting, enigmatic.

But Deliberately oblique; it will not explain itself or offer narrative resolution. You are asked to feel more than understand.

Mustang2015

Five Turkish sisters are imprisoned in their family home by strict guardians. Like Girlhood it tracks female solidarity as both lifeline and rebellion, with a visual richness that mirrors internal emotion. Urgent and tender at once.

But The pacing is slow and the ending is devastating. It's not cathartic; it's clarifying in a way that might leave you sitting quietly for a while.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Girlhood

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Rosewater2014

Both use colour and monochrome as emotional registers of what freedom and constraint feel like. Both centre female desire and solidarity in a world designed to suppress them.

Bahareh Hedayat plays Leila, a young Iranian woman in love with her female cousin, navigating a society that criminalises her desire. Shot in brilliant colour and black-and-white, it has the same visual lyricism as Girlhood and the same urgent focus on female bodies and freedom in spaces hostile to both.

But It's a queer love story in a repressive context; the ending is not happy and operates under the weight of real political danger. Also quite unknown outside festival circuits.

Pariah2011

Alike, a Black lesbian teen in Brooklyn, struggles with family, sexuality, and identity while building a chosen family. Like Girlhood, it's deeply invested in how girls remake themselves and each other. Intimate, visually confident, unsentimental.

But It has dated slightly in its video aesthetic. Some viewers find the tone fluctuates between naturalism and melodrama.

We Are the Best!2013

Three teenage girls in 1980s Stockholm form a punk band. Joyful and funny where Girlhood is grittier, but equally focused on female friendship as resistance and play as revolution. Completely alive.

But It's a comedy, which means it has a lighter touch. If you're looking for Girlhood's severity and social critique, you won't find it here.

Aftersun2022

A girl and her father on holiday in Turkey; a portrait of connection and distance. Like Girlhood it uses music, colour, and silence to suggest interiority. Melancholic, painterly, deeply felt about the stories we cannot quite tell.

But Very slow and quite abstract. The narrative is deliberately fragmented and you're expected to piece it together emotionally rather than plot-wise.

A Prophet2009

Young man enters prison and reinvents himself through intelligence and alliance. Like Girlhood, it's a finely-tuned study of survival through performance, group belonging, and the price of freedom purchased through complicity.

But It's a crime film with violence and moral ambiguity. The protagonist is not sympathetic, only compelling, which some viewers find exhausting.

Water Lilies2007

Sciamma made Girlhood four years later. This is her first articulation of the themes she would deepen: female adolescence, the body, desire, and group belonging as a site of both safety and exclusion. Water Lilies is the seed; Girlhood is what it grew into.

Céline Sciamma's first film: three girls at a swimming pool, one unrequited love, one summer. It's a poem about adolescent female longing, physical transformation, and the ache of belonging to a group that doesn't quite see you. Sensuous, painterly, structurally perfect.

But It's quiet and French and about interior feeling rather than action. Very little happens externally. If you need plot momentum, you will be frustrated.

Selma2014

Released the same year as Girlhood and bookended with it: both are Black cinema in 2014 about constraint and aspiration, about what it costs to survive and resist in a world that counts you as less. Both shoot blackness with tenderness and formal beauty rather than pity or anger alone.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1965 Selma marches. A historical epic, yes, but Ava DuVernay shoots it with the intimacy of a character study, focusing on the interior cost of leadership and the weight of carrying a movement. Visually and emotionally stunning.

But It's a straight historical drama and quite long. Some viewers find it stagey and wish it had more nuance about its protagonist's flaws.