Ginger & Rosa

Ginger & Rosa (2012) — watch online on iFILM, a British drama written and directed by Sally Potter. London, early 1960s: the Cuban Missile Crisis is in the news and two lifelong best friends are quietly coming apart. Ginger, played by Elle Fanning, channels her dread into anti-nuclear marches and angry poetry. Rosa, played by Alice Englert, is drawn toward a different kind of danger entirely.

The betrayal at the film's centre isn't political — it's personal and visceral, involving Ginger's father (Alessandro Nivola) and destroying the one relationship she thought was solid. Christina Hendricks plays her mother, Annette Bening and Timothy Spall fill out the margins as bohemian idealists whose theories about free love don't account for the damage they leave behind.

Potter frames teenage experience without sentimentality: the fear is real, the grief is real, and the scale of a personal loss sits right alongside the threat of nuclear annihilation without either one feeling exaggerated. Fanning holds every scene she's in. Stream Ginger & Rosa (2012) on iFILM.