Big Girls Don't Cry | BFI Flare 2026

Big Girls Don't Cry is a deeply moving coming-of-age film that tackles the harder parts of adolescence, focusing on the crucial periods where you grapple with desire for the first time and your sense of self and identity is transformed. Paloma Schneideman's feature-length debut chronicles the life of 14-year-old Sid Bookman (Ani Palmer) set over a summer in 2006. As she discovers the internet and longs for the attention and friendship of older girls, she begins to lose her identity in favour of imitating the very people she looks up to.

Big Girls Don't Cry excels with Schneideman's approach to depicting the ugly parts of adolescence, which lots of coming-of-age films shy away from. The decision to open the film with a scene where Sid watches an older man masturbating to her voice sets the tone for the rest of the film. The inappropriate relationships and interactions continue in her search for acceptance from the popular but mean older girls, which leads to her meeting a group of college guys who do not hesitate to make vulgar sexual jokes to her, dubbing her 'Sid the Sucker' and becoming more predatory as the film transpires.

Ani Palmer's debut performance is remarkable and carries the film, even when the plot feels predictable and cliché. Every decision we see as bad and poorly made is easy to understand, as Palmer stands in front of a mirror about the pierce her belly button after looking at images of her new friends on MSN and longing to look like them. Palmer's Sid, despite all of this, longs for girls, and is contending with her desires towards her newfound friends and her facial expressions throughout the film, which capture the shame, loneliness, and fear as she navigates uncomfortable situation after another leads you to feel yourself in her, and it makes the more uncomfortable moments gut-wrenching, and the embarrassing moments cringe-inducing.

Big Girls Don't Cry is a difficult yet necessary watch, having experienced that period of time (albeit nine years later than Sid), I found myself holding compassion for my younger self and wishing I could have watched it back then.