Winner of the Queer Palm and Best Actress awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister is a tale about a young woman working to reconcile her identity and her family’s worldview. Fatima (Nadia Melitti) is the youngest of three adult children in a loving but conservative French-Algerian household. At home, she’s a dutiful daughter, but out in the social world of Paris, another side of Fatima comes to the fore. Beautifully observed by writer-director Hafsia Herzi, and anchored by the fantastic, star-making, and award-winning performance from Melitti, The Little Sister goes beyond the standard coming-of-age tropes to deliver a powerful story about self-discovery and its conflicts with family and religion—although, in a refreshing twist here, the film seems to suggest that it might just be possible to reconcile the two on occasion. The Little Sister also features one of the steamiest, most collar-tugging kisses seen on film in recent years (in this reviewer’s opinion, at least). ~SM
