Little Trouble Girls Review
Little Trouble Girls (2025) Film Review from the 24th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Urska Djukic, written by Urska Djukic and Marina Gumzi, and starring Jara Sofija Ostan, Mina Svajger, Sasa Tabakovic, Natasa Burger, Tomazin Irena, Marko Mandic, Strle Mateja, Casson Matia, and Sasa Pavcek.
Little Trouble Girls is a Slovenian drama film centered around 16-year-old Lucia (Jara Sofija) who explores her burgeoning sexuality while on a retreat with her choir group. For her directorial debut, Urska Djukic (who is also credited as a screenwriter) does a solid job crafting a well-made film, but it ultimately suffers from the ultra-realistic tone and style that weigh down the entirety of the movie like a weighted blanket.
For decades, this kind of neo-realist cinema has been massively popular in contemporary European films. The Italians first championed this style with landmark films like Rome, Open City, and The Bicycle Thieves after the fall of Mussolini and the fascists in the mid-1940s.
Lending to more of a focus on natural lighting, settings, and common characters, Djukic adopts this mythos with Little Trouble Girls. Acting as a foil to gluttonous American cinema, Little Trouble Girls unfortunately swings too far in the other direction and, in doing so, lulls the viewer to sleep.
The film centers on Lucia, a shy, introverted teenage girl who sings in a choir with a group of friends and classmates. Among her group is the spunky and charismatic unofficial leader, Ana-Maria (Mina Svajger), who takes a particular liking to Lucia. Their friendship grows closer as we follow the girls on a convent retreat nestled deep in the beautiful countryside.
If you think this is the part of the film where it will turn into an A24 Catholic horror movie, you would be mistaken. Instead, we remain focused on Lucia as she navigates her complicated feelings while taking a liking to a sweaty day laborer working at the convent. A more appealing word to describe Little Trouble Girls would be “patience.” It is also something you will require when watching the picture.
The choral singing is a vital component of the film, and we spend much of the movie’s runtime in their choir practice. Djukic focuses the camera heavily on close-ups of singing mouths and makeup-less teens as they fight to find that perfect sound for their demanding teacher, Dr. Primozic (Marko Mandic). Anyone who has partaken in a music class during school will immediately recall these tense moments when the teacher singles out Lucia and her singing performance.
This is also where the film thrives, in the shame of adolescence, when being embarrassed in front of your peers is a fate worse than death. Mandic does a terrific job of being an understanding and caring figure for the impressionable young girls while also demanding their very best to the point of tears.
The strength of Little Trouble Girls lies in its portrayal of the universal stress and angst that comes with being a 16-year-old child. A common terror that almost everyone can relate to in some capacity. Whether you were a Slovenian teenager singing in a church choir or a boy from Milwaukee trying out for the baseball team, those adolescent stings can stay with us for a lifetime. But in Little Trouble Girls it is the reliance on overbearing realism that slows the movie down to a fault. Some viewers will be able to appreciate the glacial pacing, but I fear that many will not be awake to watch the final confounding frames of the picture.
Rating: 5/10
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