Synopsis 

One summer day, a girl drowns in the swimming pool of her house. Cleo, with only twelve years old, will face the loss of her sister in a world without adults and followed by her three cousins who will join her through her new and threatening female world.

Program Note

One summer, a group of young girls stay at a house. They swim in the pool and play in the garden. They seem to enjoy the season, but each of them struggles in the transition from a girl to a woman in their own way. Cleo in particular, whose little sister drowned in a pool, has a hard time entering adulthood. Cleo is too young to understand the meaning of death, but her life is shaken by her mother and the vivid memories with her sister. The film feels like a poem expressed in a watercolor painting. Rather than focusing on a character, the film follows the fragmented, uneasy emotions the girls experience in a dream-like fashion. Slow summer days make a striking contrast with the girls who go through the summer season of life. It is confusing to see various elements such as growth and death, dream and reality, memory and fact. However, when the fragmented pieces come together, they form a complete picture. In the process, the girls learn the sad loss of death and bid farewell to the innocence of childhood. They secretly go through their rites of passage without any intervention from adults. This is the debut feature of an Argentinian director born in 1996. She received a Special Mention in the Generation Kplus at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. [WOO Hyekyung]