Watch: “Girls Lost” Mixes Gender, Adolescence, and Supernatural Powers

Growing up can often feel like you’re living in a fantasy realm, and Swedish director Alexandra-Therese Keining aims to capture that feeling in “Girls Lost.”

Based on the controversial and award-winning Swedish novel “Pojkarna” by Jessica Schiefuerm, “Girls Lost” tells the story of three best friends — “bullied, outcast fourteen-year-old girls — who explore gender identity, love, and courage as they navigate the transitional age between childhood and adulthood. The girls find a magic flower that temporarily turns them into boys, and during nocturnal odysseys they enjoy their new identities. One of the girls is lured further and further into the boys’ world questioning her sexuality as well, as her friends struggle to decipher their new magical reality.”

In a video interview below, Keining talks more about the themes of gender, fairy tale, and adolescence. “Fairy tale and imagination are mixed in a realistic depiction of what it’s like to grow up today, seen from a girl’s perspective,” Keining says of the film. “I wanted to examine the limits of self and the body, and show that the phenomena of identity and gender is in perpetual motion, something that is constantly changing and is negotiable. I wanted to portray gender as a fluid notion, not an absolute, and explore ideas about how gender influences how we move through the world and how we are treated by others.”