Acclaimed Swedish Film, ‘Girls Lost’ Offers Fresh View On Gender

Girls Lost, the unusual Swedish teenage gender-themed story from acclaimed writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining is the story of three best friends.

The bullied, outcast 14-year-old girls explore gender identity, love and courage as they navigate the transitional age between childhood and adulthood.

Based on the controversial and award winning Swedish novel Pojkarna by Jessica Schiefuerm, Girls Lost tells an original story and question gender and teenage sexuality in surprising ways.

After finding a magical flower, the girls are temporarily turned into boys, and during nocturnal odysseys they enjoy their new identities. One of the girls is lured further and further into the boys’ world questioning her sexuality as well, as her friends struggle to decipher their new magical reality.

This film is a skillfully crafted tale about the essence of gender and sexual confusion and awakening, with a clever supernatural twist. Employing sleek visuals and a tactile electronic score, Girls Lost is presented in an allegorical mode similar to films and TV series like Ginger Snaps and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by linking supernatural powers to puberty and the emergence of adolescent desire.

Director Alexandra-Therese said, “In Girls Lost, fairy tale and imagination are mixed in a realistic depiction of what it’s like to grow up today, seen from a girl’s perspective. I wanted to examine the limits of self and the body, and show that the phenomena of identity and gender are in perpetual motion, something that is constantly changing and is negotiable. I wanted to portray gender as a fluid notion, not an absolute, and explore ideas about how gender influences how we move through the world and how we are treated by others.”

Girls Lost is a portrait of three adolescent outsiders who undergo a startling transformation.

Watch on Apple TV

X
X