“I don’t know how to describe me. I’m not an adult, but I’m not a kid anymore,” says one of the teens at the center of “Cusp.” From Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, the award-winning doc is an intimate portrait of three high school girls — Brittney, Aaloni, and Autumn — living in rural Texas. A new trailer for the award winner sees the trio sounding off on this transitional period of their lives, where there’s no blueprint for “normal.” “My life is still, like, I don’t know what’s going on,” we’re told.
The spot also includes frank conversations about sexuality and sexual assault. “I just about never get drunk when I’m going out to a party because I’m scared something’s going to happen — like someone’s going to do something,” one of the teens explains. And while you can “always tell somebody no,” they aren’t necessarily going to listen, the group agrees. One of the highschoolers emphasizes that girls are also “scared to say no” because “guys are powerful.”
Hill and Bethencourt took home the Emerging Filmmaker Special Jury Award at Sundance for “Cusp.”
“We hope [audiences] think about what it actually looks like to normalize trauma from such a young age and realize how much teenage girls are dealing with on a day-to-day basis,” the collaborators told us. “We think a story like this also tends to make people look back on their own teenage years, not just to empathize with the girls but to understand the ways we all perpetuate toxic masculinity.”
“Cusp” opens in NY and LA November 12 ahead of its Showtime premiere November 26.
