The Cinematheque

Finland

“Authentic and emotionally gratifying, Vilhunen’s debut is an earnest and endearing drama, one that’s often elevated by a lens that’s both solicitous and sweet in capturing this poetically wistful examination of early adulthood and lost innocence.”

Will Ashton, The Playlist

The fiction-feature debut of Finnish filmmaker Selma Vilhunen, director of the Oscar-nominated short Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, is a smart and sensitively-handled coming-of-age tale about an adolescent girl in search of her birth father. Twelve-year-old Varpu, bright and independent, is overwhelmed by the erratic behaviour of her oft-absent, increasingly-negligent single mother. Nagged by her nosey peers about her home life—to which she coolly conjures up invented stories—Varpu starts digging into her biological father’s identity and whereabouts, before embarking on a runway journey to find him.