Girlhood by Vania Turner and Maria Sidiropoulou – 2021

“Girlhood” follows Vera, Christina and Nefeli, three seventeen-year-old girls in Athens who come of age during the pandemic. From the first frame, we’re invited into their worlds as they talk about their frustrations and dreams. These intimate, sometimes painful conversations are threaded with the Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok videos shaping their self-image in quarantine.

Tough, responsible, and mature beyond her years, Christina shares a room with her brother, helps her mother with the housework, and yearns more than anything to gain her independence. Vera is insecure about her weight and longs for acceptance, while also yearning for a more inclusive world. And Nefeli discovers feminism and stops hanging out with boys, while she escaped through books and social media.

This coming-of-age story shows teenage girls trying to figure out how to love themselves as they transition from girls to women in a society that remains deeply patriarchal. Even as their faces are glued to a screen during quarantine, they find refuge in their friendship as they finish school and begin the road to adulthood.

We wanted to capture how the pandemic’s isolation shaped the ups and downs of adolescence for three girls who come of age in a society that remains deeply patriarchal. We want to get people to think about the pervasiveness of everyday sexism; to show how subtle and harmful it can be, and its lasting impact on girls’ lives; to spark honest, necessary conversations about how girls and boys are raised.

–Greek premiere: 44th Drama International Short Film Festival, National Competition section, #DISFF44

–Athens International Film Festival, “Greek Short Stories” Competition section of the 27th Athens International Film Festival, #AIFF27

–Worldwide premiere: 38th Chicago International Children's Film Festival, International Competition section, #CICFF38

– 4th Athens International Children’s Film Festival, #ATHICFF4

–15th Greek Documentary Festival – Docfest, Official Competition section

–24th Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People, KIDS & DOCS International Competition section, #OIFF24

–KinderDocs, “Girls change the world,” Benaki Museum, Athens

–8th Peloponnisos International Doc Film Festival, Official Competition section in the category “Equality”

–Psaroloco International Film Festival for Children & Young People, Municipal Theater of Piraeus

–7th Ennesimo Film Festival, “Worldwide” section, Modena, Italy

–Athens Short Film Festival 2022, “Best Greek Production” Official Competition section

–At Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, as part of the special screenings of awarded films from the Greek Documentary Festival – Docfest

–At DANAOS cinema theater, as part of the nominated films for Iris Awards

–At Beursschouwburg in Brussels, as part of the three-day screening festival “Feminisms and Filmmaking in the context of Greece and Intertwining Diasporas” organized by Surplus Cinema (Day 3 – Imaging Action)

–3rd prize in Best Documentary Short Film, 15th Greek Documentary Festival – Docfest, Official Competition section

–Special Mention Medium-Length Documentary Award, KIDS & DOCS Jury Awards, 24th Olympia International Film Festival for Children & Young People, KIDS & DOCS International Competition section

–Nominated for Best Short Documentary Film Iris Award 2022

Popaganda, Girlhood reaches gently and softly the girl inside you

“Vania Turner and Maria Sidiropoulou remind us through an intimate documentary on the “unbearable lightness of adolescence” what it means to be a girl.”

Vice Greece, Girlhood”: Inside a Girl’s Universe as it Really Is

“The viewer will enter the world of Vera, Christina, and Nefeli, remembering their own adolescence, insecurities, anxieties, dreams, anticipation, longing and not longing to grow up at the same time. “Girlhood” is an exemplary anatomy of a teenage girl’s psyche, revealing in a firsthand and absolutely non-didactic manner that the most dangerous form of sexism lays in the everyday and subtle details.”

Vogue Greece, The X-File: Three girls blossom amid lockdown

“They celebrate birthdays, play games, get bored and daydream about their future, tucked under a blanket, on the balcony, in the kitchen of their house, always with a cell in hand. Inside this claustrophobic setting, a melancholy of injustice transpires (why can’t they celebrate life outside at this age?), as well as the certainty that youth shall bloom wherever it may find itself.”

Directors: Vania Turner and Maria Sidiropoulou

Director of Photography: Vania Turner

Editor: Vania Turner

Creative Production: Maria Sidiropoulou

Script: Vania Turner

Research: Maria Sidiropoulou

Executive Producer: Laika Productions

Music Composer: Miss Trichromi

Sound: Vania Turner

Sound Designer: Stelios Koupetoris

Colorist: Aggelos Mantzios / MetaPost

Colorist Assistant: Foivos Petikas

An Onassis Culture Production