Fresh from a wildly successful run at Sundance, Big Girls Don’t Cry will have its NZ premiere as the Opening Night film at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival, kicking off on 29 July.
The debut feature from Auckland-based director Paloma Schneideman, Big Girls Don’t Cry is a tender coming-of-age portrait of girlhood, set in early 2000s Matakana.
The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Dramatic Competition earlier this year, before joining other major global festivals including SXSW, BFI: Flare London and TIFF: New Wave. Along the way, it garnered rave reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter saying Big Girls Don’t Cry “pulses with a powerful sense of place and terrifically charged scenes of chaotic intimacy, its exceptional performances led by [Ani] Palmer, Rain Spencer and Noah Taylor.”
The film follows 14-year-old Sidney ‘Sid’ Bookman (Ani Palmer) as she’s caught between childhood and adolescence, navigating burgeoning sexual curiosity, and grappling with a desperate need for acceptance and all the clumsiness of growing up. Playing out in the era of dial-up internet and reality tv, the film weaves together themes of queer adolescence, class shame and identity, at a moment when the wider world
