La hermana pequeña

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Well this was a bit underwhelming.

Firstly, I do appreciate Hafsia Herzi's ambitious direction and approach on the themes and concepts. A tale about Muslim women exploring about their identities, faith and sexually is an interesting concept. Throughout, Herzi does show some strong directing with the setting, atmosphere and tone. As it is clear what she is wanting to tell about the message and the importance of the characters within the story.

The performances, particularly Nadia Melliti, is great as her emotions, quiet and strong chemistry is great and full of light. Unfortunately, Herzi doesn't take full advantage of it's concept because as whole, it's pretty much a standard and somewhat cheesy coming-of-age story that does fall into the lines of predictability and thinly written. Many of the characters, while does have some merit to them, lack the emotional connection and bonding that is necessary for a good movie. Which makes it a little difficult to fully connect or believe a word from them.

Alongside with some good production designs and camerawork, the score is pretty rough with some weird music choices, some of the dialogue is bad, and there is some pacing issues that is displayed throughout. Overall, it has some good moments but definitely noting too special on it's core.

The youngest of 3 sisters, Fatima graduates high school in suburban Paris, and enrols in university "in the city" to study philosophy. While in high school, the boys have distinct ideas about what is appropriate sexual acts, and what is inappropriately gay. Fatima turns down her boyfriend's offer to ask for her hand in marriage, but instead goes on dating apps to find older women to teach her how to be a lesbian.

The bulk of the film is about her university years, where she blossoms into a full-fledged lesbian, but has a crisis of faith, consulting with her Iman. Despite the title, the family is written out of this part of the story, except for a vist to her mother.

I saw this film at the North American Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival,with a Q+A with the star and producer. The film is based on an autobiographical novel, with the novelist also writing the script, with some added information that was not in the novel. There are titbits that include the reason for Fatima to play soccer by herself. At her time (I estimate early 2010s) and place, there are no girls' soccer teams to play on.