Stay the Same Never Change

Artist and director Laurel Nakadate takes us beyond the prepackaged and sanitized world of the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana to the true heartland of America and the tween-aged girls that inhabit it. In Kansas City, pop culture is something to be twisted and reshaped, relationships are either nonexistent or refabricated, and time is unstructured and teasing. At the heart of these girls' lives—and this innovative work of cinema—is a quest for understanding and a sense of place. The risks run and solutions posed engender both laughs and tears. The film's amateur actors and nonlinear narrative bring an unnerving, utterly human face to the challenges of young womanhood in a world that would prefer that girls watch the Disney Channel.

• woman director