'Little Girl' Review: A Trans Girl Grows Into Herself in a Lovely, Light-Filled Documentary
'Little Girl' Review: A Trans Girl Grows Into Herself in a Lovely, Light-Filled Documentary
Veteran French docmaker Sébastien Lifshitz is in top form in a transgender character study that pitches familial strength against community resistance.
Guy Lodge, provided by
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MK2 Films
Near the beginning of “Little Girl,” the camera sits quietly in on a ballet class for second-grade girls. Among them is seven-year-old Sasha Kovac, in a dark T-shirt and tights that contrast starkly with the other girls’ papery white dresses. She moves gracefully but warily, her eyes more on her fellow dancers’ movements than her own, her arms threatening to break expressively free but not quite achieving liftoff. An instructor brusquely tells Sasha to stop watching the others, but it’s easy to see why she can’t: She seems to be palpably outside this class, looking for a way in.