Chicas Tristes

Sixteen-year-olds Paula and La Maestra are inseparable. Together, they spend the summer training hard to represent Mexico at the Junior Pan American Swimming Championships. Their bond, filled with late-night confessions, shared laughter, and the unique intimacy of teenage friendship, feels unbreakable.

After a New Year's Eve party, everything changes. Following an encounter with a boy she liked, Paula becomes withdrawn and distant. Perplexed, La Maestra gently insists until her friend begins to piece together the traumatic event she can barely name.

Through a lens that neither judges nor moralizes, director Fernanda Tovar reflects on the complexities of justice in a post-#MeToo era. Embedded in a teenage world forged by social media, Chicas Tristes responds to the urgent reality of patriarchal violence with empathy and nuance. Ultimately, above all else, it is a poignant celebration of female friendship as a fragile but persistent form of resistance.