My name is Maïmouna Doucouré and I'm the Director of Cuties.
Cuties is the story of an 11-year-old little girl
who is trying to find herself.
She's navigating between two models of femininity.
One represents her mother's traditional origins.
And the other one is a group of young girls called cuties.
I had the idea of Cuties when, one day, during a neighborhood gathering in Paris,
a group of very young dancers came on the stage
and they were dancing like what we are used to seeing in a video clip.
And I was surprised because of their age. They were only 11 years old.
So I decided to spend the next year and a half doing research
I met with hundreds of pre-teens who told me their stories.
I needed to know how they felt about their own femininity in today’s society,
and how they dealt with their self-image
at a time when social media is so important.
Our girls see that the more a woman is overly sexualized on social media,
the more she's successful.
And the children just imitate what they see,
trying to achieve the same result
without understanding the meaning.
And, yeah, it's dangerous.
I recreated the little girl who I was at that age.
Growing up in two cultures
is what gave me the strength and the values I have today.
I can appreciate my double culture and live between my parents’ one,
which is Senegalese, and my French, Western one.
And as a child, that question of how to become a woman
was my obsession.
I saw so many injustices around me that women were experiencing
and I kept all of that anger inside me.
I was powerless when I was a child.
Today I can use my voice, my art,
to share my vision of femininity.
My fight for women’s freedom in society, and in our minds as well.
I put my heart into this film
because this is my story.
I believe that cinema, and art in general, can change the world.
We are able to see oppression of women in other cultures.
But my question is,
isn’t the objectification of a woman’s body
that we often see in our Western culture not another kind of oppression ?
In my research, I saw that pre-teenagers are caught in a difficult transition.
Their body is constantly changing.
And at this age, especially when you are a girl,
it can be complicated to find your place and deal with your body
that is transforming itself in spite of what you want.
You are a child but you are also coming into teenagerhood.
This age is amazing because you have all this innocence and naïveté,
and you interpret the world
with all the unlimited imagination that you have at that age.
And this is beautiful.
But at the same time, because of our societal structures,
children can so easily access a lot of adult materials.
In the film, my main character, Amy, can feel the suffering of her mother
and yet see that her mother does not take action.
So Amy just takes that revolt inside herself
and believes she can find her freedom through that group of dancers
and their hyper-sexualization.
But is that really true freedom?
Especially when you are a kid?
Of course not.
Amy will, at the end, understand that she can choose her own path.
The real question of Cuties is,
can we, as women, truly choose who we want to be,
beyond the role models that are imposed upon us by society?
I grew up in a Muslim culture, and I respect and love.
In my film the characters are evolving in that culture.
We are used to seeing Islam depicted by so many stereotypes
in movies and media.
In Cuties, I depict the point of view of Amy’s mother,
who thinks that she has to accept all that is happening to her.
But we get to see an Imam who comes and says, "No.
In our religion, women have rights."
It was very important for me to show that forgotten, but true, aspect of Islam.
Cuties is a deeply feminist film with an activist message.
We must all together figure out what is the best for our children.
As a director, as an artist, I am doing my part with this film.
Politicians, the educational system, parents, children...
I think all together we have to fix what’s gone wrong,
so we can give the most beautiful space to our girls and boys to grow up safely
and become the best version of themselves.
My film, Cuties, is mirror of today’s society,
a mirror sometimes difficult to look into and accept but still so true.
We can’t blame our children for what we value in our society.
I hope that people can become 11 years old
during an hour and half of Cuties, in our world.
In many ways, Amy is navigating her way in three cultures...
her family,
French, Western culture,
and this hyper-real fiction of social media.
Yeah.
Try to experience how difficult and confusing it must be
to grow up and find yourself in this triple culture.