Slovenia's Bold Film on Faith and First Love

A new movie from Slovenia is making waves. It's called "Little Trouble Girls" and it's about a young girl finding her way in a strict religious world. The director, Urška Djukić, is new to making full-length films, but she's already making a big splash. The story is about a shy 16-year-old named Lucia. She joins a Catholic school choir and meets Ana-Maria, a popular and outgoing older girl. Things get complicated when Lucia starts to like a worker she meets during a choir trip. This causes tension between Lucia and Ana-Maria and disrupts the group's harmony. Djukić didn't grow up in a very religious family, but she knows a lot about the strict rules that come from religious traditions. She wants to talk about how these rules can hold people back, especially women. She's been exploring these ideas in her short films too. The movie is full of sensory details, like shots of plants and flowers. Djukić says she let her intuition guide her while making the film. She didn't always know what she was doing, but she trusted her gut. Djukić also talks about how women's stories often get left out of history. She's working on another project about a strong woman who hid in a male monastery during a witch trial. She wants to tell this story from a woman's perspective. The movie's English title comes from a Sonic Youth song. The Slovenian title is different and comes from a famous folk song that the girls sing in the movie. Djukić found her star, Jara Sofija Ostan, by looking for someone who was on the verge of becoming a woman. Ostan wasn't a professional actor, but she learned a lot while making the film.