Petite Maman
No.2 on the Sight & Sound Best Films of 2021
A girl meets her mother as a child in the woods in a moving jewel of a film about memory, friendship and kin.
A girl meets her mother as a child in the woods in a moving jewel of a film about memory, friendship and kin.
Céline Sciamma’s beautiful fairytale reverie is occasioned by the dual mysteries of memory and the future: simple, elegant and very moving. Nelly has just lost her grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home.
She explores the house and the surrounding woods. One day she meets a girl her same age building a treehouse to whom she bears a striking resemblance. The pair become fast friends while incrementally, the girls' eerie similarities yield revelations that merge events of the past with those of the present. “What a superb movie – a jewel of this year’s Berlin film festival.” The Guardian.