Schoolgirls

Schoolgirls (Las niñas, 2020) is a Spanish coming-of-age drama you can watch online on iFILM. Zaragoza, early 1990s: eleven-year-old Celia is raised by nuns at a convent school and a single mother who keeps her on a short leash.

Then Brisa shows up. The new girl from Barcelona is louder, freer, already wise to things the catechism never mentions. Through her, Celia starts asking the questions nobody answers at home — about the father she's never met, about who she is allowed to become. Andrea Fandos carries most of it in silence, in the set of a jaw.

Director Pilar Palomero drew on her own childhood to film girlhood at a hinge in Spanish history, when the country was loosening up after Franco and the Church still wasn't. The film took Spain's Goya for Best Picture. Quiet, watchful work for anyone who loves Céline Sciamma. Stream Schoolgirls (2020) online on iFILM.