"Tell Me Where Your Dreams Are?": A Review of Celine Sciamma's Girlhood (2014)

Abstract

If one were to take the films La Haine (1995), Kids (1995), Pariah (2011) and add dashes of The Wire (2002-2008), Langston Hughes' poem "Dream Deferred" and a music video, one would have a reasonable approximation of what Celine Sciamma's 2014 film Girlhood offers by way of depicting young Black and female in contemporary France. Set in the contemporary suburbs of Paris, Girlhood follows the choices of sixteen year old, Marieme (Karidja Toure) as she threads her way through the last moments of her childhood. Allied with her crew of home girls, Marieme lives the tensions of young Black life on the margins of French society.