Following her Cesar win for best animated short with her documentary Granny’s Sexual Life, Urška Djukić gives us her first feature film, Little Trouble Girls, the tale of a young girl who joins an all-girls choir at Catholic school and befriends a flirty, slightly older student, Anna-Marija. On a monastery retreat, the girls wrestle with their growing attraction, their beliefs, and the threat of their controlling choirmaster. Beautifully shot on location in Italy, Djukić’s film grapples with important themes in the subtlest of ways, a lingering look here, the brush of an arm there, with excellent performances from its leads, Jara Sofija Ostan, Mina Švajger and Saša Tabaković as the conductor. What About Birdy sat down with Djukić to talk about the importance of music, repression and shame in a young girl’s life and working instinctively.
WAB: You mentioned that you first came up with the idea when you heard a choir of Slovenian girls sing and were moved to tears. Music is evidently a large part of this film and it is particularly symbolic that the girls are so beautiful in chorus and so discordant in their friendships. Is there any significance to the lyrics?
UD: There definitely is. The songs are very old Slovenian folk songs, and I decided not to translate them because, since I’m following the process of rehearsal, what with the singing and things happening in between there would have been too many subtitles, and people wouldn’t have been able to read everything. Hopefully they still feel the vibration of the song. They are very important lyrics, especially in Triglav which is about Slovenia’s highest mountain. I chose this as a contrast to how harsh the conductor is on Lucia. It’s about how you can be proud of your homeland – and yet sometimes it disappoints you. Then of course, there is Little Trouble Girl by Sonic Youth, which the title is inspired by. It really says a lot about growing up as a girl, and what it means in this world. You need to pretend, you need to be accepted – so this is no doubt the most important song in the film.
WAB: There is a mix of cattiness and loyalty in the girls’ relationships. What is it about a group of young girls that is fascinating for you?
UD: I grew up a girl. I remember all the times we were discovering ourselves, who we really were, but also the rules that repressed us. This was the topic I wanted to explore, and especially the concept of attraction too – this is not always linked to wanting to have intercourse, it’s more about being attracted to the things that are important for you on your personal growth journey. I made the two girls, Lucija and Anna-Marija, contrasting energies, like yin and yang. They are in fact one and the same person, but just with two different faces, the two faces I think all of us have inside ourselves, the shy and the courageous.
WAB: What roles does shame have to play in Lucija’s coming of age, in becoming a woman? And where do we go from here – how to allow young women to speak more truthfully, especially in the space of religion?
UD: Shame and guilt are the mechanism of repression in this film. When I was growing up, I always felt I was doing something wrong. I feel now that it’s so important for girls to understand they are not doing anything wrong, that this is the nature of our body and that we should listen to that more than to the rules of society. Of course, some are good and important, but some completely disable you. Shame is a concept that doesn’t really exist in some cultures – we’ve made it up, and it doesn’t help us reach our full potential. It’s a very important topic, especially connected to womanhood in a patriarchal society.
WAB: On this note, what role does the choirmaster have to play in the film?
UD: He’s sort of an antagonist in a way, and he shows these rules induce pain. I believe that only through a bad or painful experience can we learn things about ourselves, so he’s very important for Lucija. We were exploring these characters through a lot of improvisation – we also prepared a lot before the shoot, did rehearsals where we really explored the depths of human behaviour. The conductor for example represents the person following the rules, but who isn’t completely clear about himself, so when things start falling apart and he can’t control things, he reacts inappropriately. It’s behaviour present in many people today, and it’s connected with fear. We did this with all the characters – so many beautiful things happen when you can really work with actors and explore through improvisation deep human behaviours and hidden motives. All of it is in the subtext, but I think we all understand it very clearly.
WAB: The film merges the bustling convent with the quiet peace of nature wonderfully. How did you scout for locations, and was it always your intention to set it partly in the forest/lake?
UD: When I found this monastery, I fell in love immediately, and it guided me through the storytelling. This is the most important location in the story, and I ended up writing the script based on it. For example, there is a vineyard behind the monastery, and at the time, the grapes were not yet ripe. And when I was walking around, I had this idea about eating sour grapes and the idea of suffering behind that. There was also a river right next to it, so I added some scenes of the girls bathing in it. I work instinctively. When I see something or feel there’s something important there, I just go for that. And when it materialises, it’s such an amazing feeling.
Little Trouble Girls screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 29th August.
