Trailer

"NOW IT WAS OUR TURN TO WEAR SHAPELESS, SHIT-COLOURED DRESSES"

After five sisters are peeped mucking around with some boys after school in rural Turkey (on the shores of the Black Sea, in fact) they are punished and kept house-bound by their conservative uncle and anxious grandmother. Their lives suddenly shift from rounds of school and al fresco hang outs to a regimented, locked-in wife training (with memorably poo-hued uniforms) from their extended family. The girls imbue their new domestic bootcamp with tiny acts of rebellion and fun, even as they're individually rostered into prospective weddings. Told from the perspective of the charismatic youngest Lale, Mustang is spiked with an addictive tween precociousness and humour. Lale's prison-breaks become more and more crafty as her older sisters dwindle and her plans take on an admirably pragmatic urgency as the very adult incidences of violence and tragedy swell around her.

WHY SHOULD YOU SEE THIS FILM?

Mustang shows an incredible sibling, and casual female dynamic that's rarely seen on screens. Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven was one of two women in her film class at college (the other is Mustang's co-writer Alice Winocour) and she positively nails this portrayal of ‘growing up a girl with sisters' experience without needing to light a thousand femme-fireworks. This girlhood is shown with such funny realism, the sisters scrappily wrestle, gross each other out, watch soccer and just hang, in truly great performances from five (mostly) non-actors with an effervescent group dynamic that makes you want to live in it.