Though it’s set around the banlieues, Paris’ poorer, outer, districts, the spark for French film director Céline Sciamma’s film Girlhood came from watching the rowdy gangs of girls that gather around the Les Halles shopping center in the city’s heart.
She hunted down their blogs and delved into their world, creating the fictitious but all too real world of Marieme, a girl at a dead end with school, her abusive family situation and the fact her neighborhood is ruled by boys. She finds three allies and the potential for freedom in a girl gang that lives by a strict dress code, insist on her taking a new name and like haunting the shopping malls of the French capital in search of clothes to swipe. There is a particularly high note in which the girls take a cheap hotel room for the night, dress up in their clothes – security tags still on – and lip sync to Rihanna’s Diamonds.
With an electro pop soundtrack by Para One, Girlhood tackles societal pressure head on in this arresting coming of age tale. The film is in theaters from May 8th and you can get more here. And here exclusively on i-D is the new UK trailer.