The first shots of Sébastien Lifshitz’s documentary Little Girl (french title: Petite fille) lay the groundwork of respect and honesty that the director anchors himself to throughout the film. These images are that of a child dressing herself in comfortable clothing — a purple glitter shirt and “maybe” a white headband, making stylistic decisions as she looks in the mirror. She is effectively molding the exteriority of how she feels on the inside, and Lifshitz does not add any obscuring layers to these shots as he aims to crystallize the truth of this young girl’s story.
Little Girl is so much more than a documentary, acting as an adoring and sincere manifesto through the eyes of a child experiencing gender dysmorphia. Sasha, the third of four siblings who live with their parents in Reims, France, knew that she was a girl from an incredibly young age, with her only wishes of the future orbiting the possibility of presenting herself that way, physically. Though assigned male at birth, Sasha has never been a “boy,” as some critics have incorrectly stated in reviews; this is not at all the story of a transition, because there was never a transition needed for Sasha to come into herself. Under a mother’s guidance, the documentary principally follows her battle to open the eyes of the school directors, friends, and families around them to forcibly overcome the societal restrictions of gender imposed on all of us to fully understand the identity of Sasha, so that she can be allowed to “blossom” — a translation of the word in French that Sasha’s mother so often uses when her daughter experiences gender euphoria.
Not once in the film is there any display of hate or dissent brought forward to the viewers, and this is not at all a contentious story of a girl coming to the realization of her own identity. There is, however, a misguided B&W sequence showing Sasha’s babyhood photos pre-current presentation; while this does not seem to bother Sasha, it does not support the pretext Sasha is confident in her identity and knows who she is at eight years old, which is debatably more than many cis adults in their thirties can say. Lifshitz captures moments of victory, compromise, and, therefore, frustration in the face of a world that turns identity revelations into polemical whirlwinds; the film adapts what is often violent political discourse to the grace of a young girl finding her footing, both in dance classes and her backyard. The emotion of the story is brought to a visual apex through the portrayal of the love and dedication Sasha’s family has for her, and specifically, her mother’s unrepentant dedication for her daughter’s identity to be fully realized in public spaces. Moments of her mother’s confessions bring despair and grief to the surface, such as when she describes how she feels that her daughter is “missing out on her childhood” after realizing that this is the only way Sasha can move forward are vital: they protest society’s insistence on turning intrinsic identity into political warfare. She simply wants her daughter to feel love the same way any parent does.
Livshitz’s storytelling in Little Girl garners cinematic success by way of a narrative not hindered by the representation of outside discrimination. In a way, the film is much like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, because the butterfly in-and-of-itself knows its own destiny without the knowledge from those passing through. The film, heart-wrenching in nature, gives the audience the utter privilege of just one phase of Sasha’s metamorphosis, with the hope of evoking just a little more love and empathy in the world. Ultimately, however, the film underscores that we still have so much work left to do for trans individuals to get the justice that they are entitled to.
