On a hot summer day in the countryside, Ines, a young teenager, gets involved in a friendly ball game between boys her age, and among them Malik, the one she has a crush on.

Director Statement

The idea for this film was born a few weeks before the wave of sexual denunciations hit social networks in June 2020, as we began a deep and instinctive reflection on sexual consent and its ins and outs. In light of this conjuncture and of the relevance of the subject, we decided to act upon it immediately and give life to our reflection, and in a way, our denunciation.

To illustrate the subject, we, sometimes painfully, drew on our own experiences as women: Laurence, actress and screenwriter, and Myriam, director and screenwriter.

This film is intended to raise awareness about the insidious nature of all kinds of aggression and abuse that young people are subjected to as they experience their sexual awakening. These assaults are still too often passed over in silence by adults, who, believing they are doing the right thing by protecting young people from such speeches or warnings, contribute to perpetuating the stigma that resides in the belief that it is not necessary to make them aware and discuss the subject with them. Yet this omission, this lack of awareness, is critical because it is often responsible for the abuse, or at the very least, the trivialization and acceptance of the abuse.

We wish to bring to light, in a realistic manner, how, at the very dawn of adolescence, in a context of lack of awareness, abuse and aggression can occur and insidiously become sexual coercion, all the while sexual desires, hormonal surges and crushes emerge in full force.

Exploring the subject from a female perspective, we seek to move away from what has already been done, although films dealing with the issue of sexual consent and abuse between children and pre-teens are very few.