Mignonnes (2020)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Amy	Fathia Youssouf	½
Angelica	Médina El Aidi-Azouni	½
Mariam	Maïmouna Gueye
Coumba	Esther Gohourou	½
Jess	Ilanah Cami-Goursolas	½
Yasmine	Myriam Hamma	-
The Aunt	Mbissini Therese Diop	½

Review

Growing up and navigating the different arenas of life sure isn't easy for 11-year old Amy (Fathia Youssouf), a Parisian with Senegalese background. She has no friends in her school's combative schoolyard, she's expected to undergo a very traditional training in antiquated Muslim values and gender-roles at the hands of her strictly religious aunt, and then she's got the hormones of puberty raging through her body, tickling her curiosity for sex and all that this entails with regard to popularity and social positioning. Trying to juggle these conflicting interests and expectations has always been hard, but try doing it in the midst of the Internet culture and you're almost certain to fail. That is what writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré wants to (or rather is compelled to) tell us with her hard-hitting, at times provocative, but always poignant and weighty film Mignonnes. The way Doucouré is able to invite us under Amy's skin and into her ostensibly well-hidden frustrations and despairs is a testament to the veracity of her story and to how well she understands not only the dilemmas and cultural collisions at hand, but also how she remembers how it was to be thrown into puberty armed with little more than the knowledge of childhood. Doucouré gets a fantastic performance from the immensely talented Fathia Youssouf as we get to follow her quest for finding an in-group, her new self, and her place in a viable middle-ground between archaic religious practices and a desensitized social media era.