Tomboy (2011)

Tomboy is a 2011 French film directed by Céline Sciamma. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl who, after moving to a new place, has all her new acquaintances believe she is a boy. The film opened to critical acclaim, with many critics praising the directing as well as the acting.

Laure (Zoé Héran), 10 years old, moves in to a new place one summer. When she introduces herself to her new neighbours, she claims to be a boy named Mickaël. The deception works, even to the point that one of her friends, Lisa (Jeanne Disson), falls in love with "Mickaël", until she gets into a fight to protect her little sister, and the truth is exposed. The film ends with the protagonist introducing herself to Lisa (as she did at the beginning), only this time as Laure.

Tomboy won the Jury award at the 2011 Teddy Awards, given for the best film with LGBT themes at the Berlin film festival.
The film also collected the Golden Duke, the main prize of the official competition of the 2011 Odessa International Film Festival.
It also won the Audience Award at the 2011 San Francisco Frameline Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

The 2011 Philadelphia QFest Lesbian and Gay Film Festival awarded the movie for Best feature Film.
The film also won the competition at the 2011 Torino Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

An excellent and powerful French film on the issue of child psychology and sexual identity at an early age, Tomboy (2011) is now officially the second-best movie by director Céline Sciamma (with Water Lilies (2007) the first).

Laure (Zoé Héran) is a 10-year-old French girl who dresses and acts like a boy. As her mother is pregnant and her father very busy, Laure has developed her own identity for protection – she likes pretending to be a boy and thus charms Lisa (Jeanne Disson), a girl from the tenement building in which they both live. But she goes further, both in playing football with the boys and going to the pool with a small piece of Plasticine inside her trunks.

Eventually she is discovered, and made to wear a dress and tell everyone that she is in fact a girl. Strongly resembling Lord of the Flies (1990) and Viola di Mare (2008), Tomboy surprises with its dramatic insight into a child’s mind and soul.

An innocent, delicate, yet very insightful movie on whether children can invent their own identity and why they would need to do so. But this is not a psychological drama – the movie reveals itself softly, just like Laure (Héran is an an excellent child actress, by the way) dressing up as a boy and spitting on the football pitch. A movie about the ‘norm’ that asks why we should fit in it from an early age – brilliant and noble.