Little Trouble Girls is a 2025 Slovenian coming-of-age drama, written and directed by Urška Djukić in her directorial feature debut. It had its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, and received its UK theatrical release last Friday, 29 August.

This seemed a strange title to me, however I understand it comes from a song by Sonic Youth, which plays during the closing titles, so I guess that makes sense. A literal translation of the Slovene title would be What’s up, girl?

Sixteen-year-old Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan) is a painfully shy pupil at a Catholic school with an extremely controlling mother who has deliberately suppressed her sexual maturation. She joins the school’s all-girls choir and befriends the worldly and charismatic Ana-Marija (Mina Švajger). The choir goes on a residential retreat to a rural Italian convent in order to rehearse in peace, however they are disturbed by ongoing restoration work. From the beginning there is a strong sexual tension between the two girls, with a degree of low-level experimentation, however Lucija’s attraction to a male restoration worker creates an altogether different tension between the girls. When she opens up to the choir’s conductor (Saša Tabaković) about the now-unwanted advances of her friend, he betrays her confidence and turns out to be a monstrous bully who makes her life unbearable.

Whilst that outline of the plot may seem a little clunky, the film itself is far from this. It is full of flights of fancy and symbolism, much of which seems to go on in Lucija’s head, and the choir’s ethereal harmonies heighten the sensuous (and indeed sensual) mood, lifting it far above the usual cliché which a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening seems to have become. Whilst the symbolism itself may at times seem a little unsubtle (lots of flowers opening and a medieval illustration of Christ’s wound on a reredos that resembles… you get the picture), this does not impair the generally smooth ‘flow’ of the film.

Little Trouble Girls is an exceptionally assured first film, which reminded me of the early films of Céline Sciamma, and I look forward to seeing more of Urška Djukić’s work in the future. Incidentally, I believe this may be the first Slovenian film I have ever seen.