THE LITTLE SISTER

(La Petite dernière)

Los Angeles Premiere | France | 2025 | Drama | 106 min | In French with English subtitles

Directed by: Hafsia Herzi
Written by: Hafsia Herzi
Based on the Book by: Fatima Daas
Produced by: Julie Billy & Naomie Denamur (June Films), Vanessa Ciszewski (Katuh Studio), Arte France Cinéma
Cinematography: Jérémie Attard
Original Score: Amine Bouhafa
Film Editing: Géraldine Mangenot
Cast: Nadia Melliti (Fatima), Ji-Min Park (Ji-Na), Louis Memmi (Benjamin), Mouna Soualem (Cassandra), Melissa Guers (Nour), Nemo Schiffman (Yann), Rita Benmannana (Dounia), Vincent Pasdermadjian (Vincent)
International Sales: mk2 Films
US Distributor: Strand Releasing
US Release Date: TBA

Synopsis

We meet Fatima, the teenage daughter of a Muslim family in the Paris projects, as she performs her ablutions, then kneels and prays in full hijab garb.  Yet the street-slang-slinging soccer-freak and resident tomboy is far from the Islamic ideal of womanhood, and it won’t be long before her truly “veiled” nature erupts and rises to the surface. Walking off with not one, but two major prizes (the Best Actress award for Nadia Melliti and the Queer Palm) at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hafsia Herzi‘s stunning coming-of-age drama is deftly, quietly told and filled with nuanced performances across the board, as it plunges us into a devastating conflict between sexual desire, spiritual demands and self-acceptance, and the enormous courage it takes to utter the unspeakable.

Director’s Biography

Actress-turned-writer/director Hafsia Herzi made her big-screen debut in Abdellatif Kechiche’s Franco-Tunisian feature The Secret of the Grain (COLCOA 2008), for which she won both the César Award for Most Promising Actress and the Marcello Mastroianni Award in Venice. She has since appeared in over 60 films, including Stéphane Demoustier’s Borgo (2023), for which she was honored with a César Award for Best Actress. She wrote and directed her first short, La Rodba, in 2010, and her first feature, You Deserve a Lover, in 2019. Her second feature, Good Mother (2021), premièred in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, where it snagged the Ensemble Prize. That was followed by the TV movie La Cour (2022).  The Little Sister, her third theatrical feature, premiered in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and opened in France in late October. The film is presented at TAFFF prior to its US release, scheduled for 2026.