Little Girl (★★★★★) feels like a decidedly small-scale affair. Filmed cinéma vérité style, with no input from Lifshitz and no grandstanding from talking heads, it instead pulls tight focus onto a single French family, typical in every way except for daughter Sasha, who was assigned male at birth.Deceptively simple in its framing, Lifshitz’s film quietly establishes two protagonists: Sasha, and her mother Karine.
Sasha is observant beyond her years, a 7-year-old child who is keenly aware of the impact of her words — and of her identity — on both the children and adults in her life.She often catches herself mid-sentence, or refrains from speaking entirely, lest her words hurt the wrong person or reveal too much.