Directed by: Lukas Dhont
Screenplay by: Lukas Dhont, Angelo Tijssens
Cast: Victor Polster, Arieh Worthalter, Oliver Bodart
Genre: Drama / Queer Cinema
Runtime: 105 minutes
💬 Plot Overview
15-year-old Lara (a astonishing debut performance by Victor Polster) dreams of becoming a professional ballerina. After being accepted into a prestigious ballet academy in Belgium, she embarks on an exhausting training regime to keep pace with her peers. Her challenge is compounded by the fact that Lara was assigned male at birth and is simultaneously undergoing a gender transition with the guidance of medical professionals and her immensely supportive father (Arieh Worthalter). While her environment shows empathy, the true struggle unfolds inside Lara herself—her own body becomes her greatest obstacle on the path to perfection, leading to dangerous obsession and emotional strain.
🎨 Style & Direction
Dance as Emotional Language: Lukas Dhont brilliantly leverages choreography and physical expression to externalize the protagonist's inner turmoil. Every sequence in the ballet studio functions as a painful conflict between willpower and physical limitation.
Intimate, Tender Camera Work: Frank van den Eeden’s cinematography relies on close-up framing, capturing subtle gestures, beads of sweat, flushed skin, and silent hardship. Soft, natural lighting gives the film a deeply realistic yet delicate atmosphere.
Subverting Conflict Tropes: Dhont makes an unconventional narrative choice by eliminating external antagonists. Lara’s father and instructors are deeply empathetic, shifting the full weight of the drama onto Lara’s relationship with her own physical self and the impatience of adolescence.
💬 QueerFilmHub Perspective
“Girl is a remarkably powerful, tender, and uncompromising debut from Lukas Dhont—a poignant story of identity where the body becomes a battleground, and pursuing one's dream demands a confrontation with one's own limits.”
