Tiger Stripes

Girlhood is a hellish, messy joy. 

Tailor-made for lovers of the monstrous feminine canon, Amanda Nell Eu’s stunning debut blends feminist coming-of-age body horror with supernatural folklore to tell a nightmarish tale of adolescent otherness.

Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) is a rebellious preteen navigating life at a conservative all-girls school in rural Malaysia. She’s the first of her classmates to menstruate and the descent into puberty is uniquely harrowing — replete with hair loss, full-body rashes and newfound claws. Former besties Farah (Deena Ezral) and Mariam (Piqa) ostracize and bully Zaffan, shattering the dynamics of their once-close friend group. As her other close relationships violently unravel and spirits begin to haunt the town, our heroine learns to embrace the monster within.

Tiger Stripes – which took home the Grand Prize in Critics’ Week at Cannes last year – rages ferociously against repression and misogyny, channeling an infectious DIY energy that beams through the screen. Taking inspiration from Southeast Asia‘s 1950s monster cinema and calling to mind modern genre touchstones like Ginger Snaps and Raw, Eu has expertly crafted a film that’s poignant, charming and so much damn fun to watch.