Loading...

15 August 2025 — 09:30 pm

Girls will be Girls

A film by Shuchi Talati — M/14+
Guest Pedro Prista Anthropologist
Cinema · Thought

“Girls Will Be Girls” is the debut feature film by director Shuchi Talati and also marks the cinematic debut of actors Preeti Panigrahi and Kesav Binoy Kiron. This coming-of-age drama follows Mira, a 16-year-old girl navigating the discovery and exploration of her sexuality. Set in a boarding school in the Himalayan foothills, the story unfolds as Mira meets Sri, a new student with whom she falls in love. The thrill and rebellion this passion brings also begins to strain her relationship with her mother, who never had the chance to experience such freedom.

Pedro Prista is the guest speaker invited to share his reflections on the film and lead the conversation with the audience following the screening. Holding a PhD in Anthropology from ISCTE (1994), where he taught from 1984 to 2022, he is a full member of CRIA-ISCTE-IUL and an associate researcher at ICS-UL. His work has focused on transformative processes in Portuguese society, such as emigration, tourism, and the impacts of climate change, as well as on ethnological heritage, vernacular architecture and museology.

“Girls Will Be Girls” is part of EscolaNova’s film series “World’s Room” — a space of gathering where cinema becomes a tool for reflection and change, curated by Candela Varas.

Know + The World's Room

/ Artistic and technical credits

/Genre Drama   /Nacionality IN · FR   /Year 2024  
/Original version Hindi · English   /Subtitles Portuguese · English  
/Directed by Shuchi Talati  

EscolaNova, Bordeira - Aljezur
15 August 2025 (fri) — 09:30 pm
Running time
118 min approx.
Age Rating
M/14+
Tickets
5€ Single Price

Ticket office
The World's Room
Curated by Candela Varas


A dark room, a white wall, a few chairs and cushions on a wool rug. Each month, a new film is shown, always accompanied by a special guest, carefully chosen.

A film, once screened, can continue to expand through a dialogue between the audience and someone we invite to think with us. This person's role is to guide the audience in a conversation that goes beyond what the work has already revealed — someone capable of offering unexpected perspectives, suggesting new interpretations, and challenging our perceptions.

We ask whether a film can open itself to worlds beyond its own, and we seek the richness of oblique gazes that lead us through transversal paths of thought and feeling.

With this film programme from EscolaNova, which we call The Room of the World, we wish to rekindle a sense of wonder for the seventh art through a selection of sharp, poetic, political, social, and psychological contemporary cinema curated by Candela Varas in dialogue with guests from various fields of knowledge. A film and a person. A spectacle of images we watch — and then feel within us.


LISTENING

"Have we lost the ability to listen? Or are we simply forgetful — as Davi Kopenawa suggests in the book he published with Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky?
Listening is the central axis of this film programme. New affective bonds are needed between human and non-human beings, between communities, marginalised voices, or even those who do not speak but still manifest. This film selection promotes that reflection — this unforgetting, or recovery of memory — and the recognition of others (human and non-human) in creating and moving a different kind of affect."

— Candela Varas
Detailed Programme

23 may 2025
Àma Gloria
Marie Amachoukel
27 june 2025
A Queda do Céu
Eryk Rocha e Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
18 july 2025
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis
01 august 2025
Black Dog
Guan Hu
15 august 2025
Girls wil be girls
Shuchi Talati
12 september 2025
Dios es una Mujer
Andres Peyrot
24 october 2025
Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes
28 november 2025
Dahomey
Mati Diop
12 december 2025
Savanna and the Mountain
Paulo Carneiro