BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY         

Summer 2006, rural New Zealand. 14 year-old Sid Bookman is caught between childhood and adolescence, navigating a burgeoning sexual curiosity and a desperate desire for acceptance. Her coastal town is quiet and contained, but glimpses of life beyond - flickering reality TV, American pop culture, and the occasional seedy chatroom - ignite both longing and restless possibility.

Each summer, wealthy out-of-towners arrive, carrying with them a world Sid can only imagine. Drawn to their effortless glamour and an older group of teens, she shapeshifts through versions of herself, hoping one might be enough. But the harder she tries, the more chaos she creates. Everything changes when her sister returns from university with Freya, a magnetic friend from America, whose attention awakens something Sid can’t yet name. As New Year’s Eve nears - her imagined gateway to adulthood - Sid must confront the painful gap between who she is and who she’s pretending to be.

BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY is a tender, unflinching portrait of queer adolescence, class shame, and identity, told through the intimate, unvarnished lens of New Zealand girlhood at a moment when the wider world was beginning to seep in.

Stars Tara Canton, Sophia Kirkwood-Smith, Rain Spencer, Ani Palmer, Beatrix Rain Wolfe & Noah Taylor

English