BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale
Writer/director Paloma Schneideman’s coming of age drama Big Girls Don’t Cry, which premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at 2026 Sundance, is awkward from the first to the last frame, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Set in rural New Zealand in 2006, it follows 14 year old Sid Bookman as she navigates her world and burgeoning sexuality during early-era social media, cell phone use and messaging. The film is a constant reminder of what a train wreck online use has been for teens from day one. This is demonstrated in one of the first scenes, in which Sid interacts with a 30-something (aka pedophile) masturbating to her voice. Sid is curious, self-destructive, desperate to belong, has little impulse control, and has access to the web. That’s a recipe for disaster.
This story isn’t action packed. Rather, it unfolds at a pace in keeping with the time and place, a sleepy beach town in summer. Sid has a loyal best friend Tia, but she’s too fascinated by Freya, her older sister Adele’s American friend, to be a good friend herself. She writes sexual messages posing as Tia’s older brother, for one thing. Sid is also ingratiating herself to two more popular girls by stealing her dad’s alcohol. She tries to connect with more self assured girls by parroting their style and nonchalance, while shame about her sexual identity has her spiraling downward, and making worse and worse choices.
This might be a movie we’ve seen before in some fashion, but not one that is so femme-centric while also firmly steeped in both Kiwi identity and queer discovery. Schneideman guides her lead, compellingly watchable newcomer Ani Palmer, to anchor herself in the propulsive desire to belong, and a yearning for acceptance that every girl and woman who ever lived will recognize. She doesn’t judge or try to answer any questions from within the character’s journey. Self discovery takes a lot longer than one summer filled with making, and hopefully facing, a lot of mistakes. As such, the ending leaves things up in the air in just the same way one summer for any 14 year old girl is likely to do.
3 out of 4 stars,
