Do you remember how you felt as a teenager? Discovering your sexuality, trying to fit in? Well, Little Trouble Girls evokes those feelings in the audience once more. Urška Djukić’s feature length debut had its premiere at the 75th Berlinale on 14th February 2025 as part of the Perspectives programme strand. For a feature length directorial debut, Little Trouble Girls has you reeling with emotions that you may have felt in your teenage years, more likely if you were a teenage girl. Being an introvert is difficult but going through mental and physical changes while away with a group of adolescent girls is even more difficult.
Little Trouble Girls follows 16-year-old Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan), a first-year student, as she joins an all-girls choir at her Catholic school, mainly comprised of the older grades, and is stressed with the expectations her mother has set for her. Within her first few moments in the choir, Lucia befriends a popular and flirty third year student, Ana-Maria (Mina Švager). Bonds between teenage girls can be easily made, and easily broken, sadly for Lucia, she learns this the hard way. During the choir’s weekend retreat at a countryside convent, their intensive rehearsals and clique connection grows. But Lucia develops a fascination with one of the convent’s male construction workers, which, along with her flirtation with Ana-Maria, leads to strains within the choir. Lucia starts to question her beliefs and values as she starts to understand her budding sexuality within these unfamiliar surroundings. She must decide between her new desires, or her relationships built within the choir.
A blank screen. A girl breathing. Practicing her breaths. That’s how Djukić opens her film, by inviting you into the character of Lucia. That’s what’s important. To connect with the film on a more emotional level, for the audience to feel what Lucia feels and goes through throughout, is how the film excels. As all coming of age films go, for the older viewer, it is important to be able to establish an emotional connection with the protagonist. With her filmmaking techniques, Djukić invites the audience into Lucia’s psyche and brings that connection through the screen.
From the moment the audience sees faces on the screen, we are invited closely into the lives of these girls. It feels as though there was a specific choice made when choosing the shots for the film and the distance between the camera and Lucia, as well as the other girls. Most of the time the characters are shown through mid-shots or close-ups. The focus of the camera is also always specific on one character. The choice of these shots makes the content and connection with Lucia feel more intimate, something that allows the film’s plot to work. Combining these photographic choices with the stellar acting of young Jara Sofija Ostan truly enhances the film and leaves you reminiscent, or scared, of what it was, and is, like to be a teenage girl.
The Berlinale selection committee said it best, Little Trouble Girls belongs in the Perspectives strand. A strand that is dedicated to first fiction features. Director Urška Djukić makes it evident that she is cinematically fluent and has big ideas of how to show the world to a wide scale audience, allowing them to connect in different ways. Little Trouble Girls does just that and more: It tells a story of a young girl, coming of age, but it also connects the audience and invites them to follow what it feels like to be on the brink of that shift in your life.
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