Hafsia Herzi's latest work The Little Sister —an adaptation of the bestseller by Fatima Daas—follows roughly two years in the life of an intensely repressed French-Algerian teenager struggling to reconcile her lesbian identity with her religious upbringing and her family’s heteronormative expectations. Herzi’s take on sapphic sexuality is subtle and elegantly drawn to echo its protagonist’s ambivalent journey through high school and college— and the psychic turmoil of her first great love. Boasting poignant performances by newcomer Nadia Melliti (who won the prize for Best Actress at Cannes) and Park Ji-min, The Little Sister is a rare coming-of-age film that understands personal growth not as a linear experience but as a perpetual back and forth between desire and fear. (Viennale)