Tomboy

After moving to a new town, ten year old Laure tells the children on the estate that her name is Mikael and lets them take her for a boy. Over one summer she builds a life around that self, until the start of school and her family's naming threaten to expose it.

The film watches childhood self fashioning in the brief window before adult categories close in, holding gender and identity open as something a child is actively making. It is a tender resource for thinking about identity formation and the pressures of naming. It screened in the Panorama section of the 2011 Berlin Film Festival.