Berlinale 2026: Sad Girlz, The Moment

If there’s one major section of the Berlinale that I tend to overlook, year after year, it’s Generations. The section has its own awards jury and it’s always divided into two parts: KPlus, which is all ages/kid friendly; and 14Plus, which contains coming-of-age stories and young adult fare. I’ve seen some charming stuff from KPlus lineups in the past, but it’s the 14Plus films that often surprise me and have me kicking myself for not seeking out more of them during the screenings. Case in point, Alexandre Rockwell’s Sweet Thing from the 2020 festival – a fantastic film about a couple of resilient siblings trying to cope with their loving but severely alcoholic dad. It’s the kind of truly independent, shot-on-16mm film that barely gets made any more and should be the lifeblood of film festivals.

This year, I’ve only caught one Generations movie, but it’s a powerful one: Sad Girlz (Chicas Tristes) by the Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Tovar. It’s a movie of dazzling colors that beautifully captures Mexico City, as two high school girls, Paula (Darana Álvarez) and La Maestra (Rocio Guzmán), experience a transformative period in their lives that coincides with the possibility of their swim team getting to compete in Brazil. What makes Tovar’s film so special is how finely attuned it is to the interiority of these two girls, and to the way their friendship strengthens and breaks during the story. You’ll often hear about the “show don’t tell” rule when it comes to exceptional filmmaking, and Sad Girlz is a brilliant example of putting that rule into practice. It’s all about the small gestures, the subtle looks, the way the characters’ wardrobes change and how the camera captures them differently.

The incident that changes everything happens off-screen, when a boy that Paula likes and wants to sleep with ignores Paula’s refusal and pressures her into having sex in a bathroom at a party. It was her first time, and when she tells La Maestra what happens, the reality of what happened becomes clearer. After the two consult with ChatGPT, they’re told that, yes, Paula was raped. Sad Girlz is by no means the first to deal with this kind of scenario, but it does so in a way that perfectly blends realism and stylization – making it all very accessible and tying the drama to a lively visual flair. At one climactic and heartbreaking moment, the two friends are called on stage to do some karaoke and the DJ introduces La Maestra as their neighborhood’s Zendaya – evoking the heightened teen drama of HBO’s Euphoria. It’s funny because Guzmán does carry some of Zendaya’s look and energy – but also because Sad Girlz is taking a lot of that show’s themes and handling them with far more honesty and integrity without losing any of the pizazz.

Speaking of pizazz, let’s briefly mention one of the bigger titles taking a bow at this year’s Berlinale, The Moment, starring Charli XCX and directed by her frequent music video collaborator Aidan Zamiri. I’ll say up front that I wouldn’t consider myself a superfan of Charli’s but I’ve always enjoyed her version of the hedonistic pop star – no matter how much that image might be cultivated or brand managed. So I was absolutely confused when the movie, made through A24, a studio that is in a good position to take some chances, turned out to be an extremely broad and tame mockumentary, more in the vein of Abbott Elementary than Spinal Tap or any of the Christopher Guest movies. It’s all very sitcom oriented, complete with zoom-ins on people making worried expressions to the camera, and phony misunderstandings forcing the story into unbelievable and unnecessary conflicts. There’s even an extended scene poking fun at a practitioner of New Age therapy at a spa in Ibiza, providing “jokes” that may have been slightly funny about thirty years ago.

It’s possible that The Moment exists just to spoof the pop star documentaries that Taylor Swift has been churning out in recent years. But that doesn’t totally track because there’s a healthy dose of sincerity in The Moment, and it seems genuinely interested in commenting on the pressure an artist can be put under to keep a brand alive and in the consciousness of a public with fleeting attention spans. It all leads me to believe that The Moment exists to prove Charli XCX can act. It succeeds in that regard, and since she already has a couple more movies in the pipeline, there’s reason to hope that these will be more worthy of her talent.