{"id":342037,"date":"2026-03-16T12:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T12:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/342037\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T12:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T12:32:09","slug":"big-girls-dont-cry-the-film-on-coming-of-age-as-a-queer-teen-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/342037\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Girls Don’t Cry, the film on coming of age as a queer teen girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up as a pre-teen in rural New Zealand, filmmaker Paloma Schneideman found herself with \u201clots of boyfriends\u201d. Or rather boys who, really, were just friends. \u201cI always had so many boyfriends \u2018cos we were just buddies, you know?\u201d she recalls today, from home in Auckland.<\/p>\n

As she broached her early teens though, her friendships became squeezed. \u201cPressure starts to occur,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of influence coming from the internet and TV<\/a>. I just felt this massive disparity shift as all my friends were developing and and getting boyfriends and being sexualised, and I remember just being like, \u2018F***, like, I am being left behind here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By 14, a timer had been set: she fretted about earning her \u201cstripes\u201d or \u201cno one\u2019s going to like me anymore\u201d. While she wanted her long, drawn out summer days to be spent playing The Sims or making silly dances with her friends, they were instead spent agonising over how to, and whether she should, start acting like an adult. \u201cI don\u2019t even know how that starts to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is one of many liminal spaces Schneideman explores in her debut feature Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry<\/a>. There\u2019s a murky territory between intimacy being something platonic or a symbol of familial affection, and it suddenly being expected of you by your peers in strange new ways. How do you survive that inexorably traumatic time between childhood and adolescence, when those peers appear to know who they are, while everything you thought you knew about yourself has crumbled?<\/p>\n

The film, which will screen at this year\u2019s London\u2019s LGBTQ+ film festival BFI Flare<\/a> on 26, 28 and 29 March, follows 14-year-old Sid (Ani Palmer in a startling acting debut), growing up, also in rural New Zealand. Over the course of a summer, Sid\u2019s sexuality burgeons as she crushes intensely on her sister\u2019s friend Freya (The Summer I Turned Pretty\u2019s<\/a> Rain Spencer, \u201cfunny as f*** and a dear friend,\u201d Schneideman says).<\/p>\n

\"\"Rain Spencer and Ani Palmer as Freya and Sid in Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry. (Blue Fox Entertainment)<\/p>\n

She drinks, smokes and pierces her own belly button as she aches to be welcomed in by the cooler, older clan. She is mocked and coerced by older boys and absorbs mixed messages from girls. She abandons her friends. She explodes at her father (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory\u2019s \u201cvery f****** funny and very smart\u201d Noah Taylor). This is a coming-of-age movie with all the warts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the film for my inner child, for my younger self,\u201d says Schneideman. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t have that language, you\u2019re desperately looking for ways to understand yourself and film has always been that for me and I guess what I hope this film is for some people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry is set in 2006, the year of the Fergie song of the same name. The year was a liminal space of sorts: the internet was upon us but social media was still in its infancy; we were between the brazen homophobia that powered the AIDS crisis<\/a> and the insidious anti-LGBTQ+ vitriol that is ubiquitous today. Schneideman, now in her early 30s, came of age around 2006, and though her movie isn\u2019t quite autobiographical, there are traces of her in there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a hot mess,\u201d she laughs of the brain-mangling experience of being a teen discovering for the first time that you\u2019re queer, as Sid does. The waters between learning what being queer is, understanding that you are queer, and reaching some sort of self acceptance of the fact are muddy and unsettled. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s that simple, you know? It\u2019s just a thing [Sid\u2019s] moving through,\u201d Schneideman says. The ambiguity of discovering queerness isn\u2019t something she\u2019s seen much of on screen. \u201cJust that kind of mess of: \u2018Well, do I like you? Do I want to be like you? Are you my mother?\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Rain Spencer, Paloma Schneideman, Ani Palmer and Noah Taylor. (Getty)<\/p>\n

Schneiderman has been working in the entertainment industry for the past decade; she also makes (award-winning) music under the alias PollyHill. While her first short film Mine arrived in 2016, and she has found acclaim at film festivals with other short films since, it was with the help of the Oscar-winning The Power of the Dog director Jane Campion that she began making her first feature. In 2023, she was selected to be mentored by Campion via her \u2018A Wave in the Ocean\u2019 programme. Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry began as a short under Campion\u2019s meticulous eye, but she told Schneiderman that there was enough substance for a full-length movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just tried to move through directing my first feature with a \u2018What would Jane do?\u2019 mentality,\u201d she says. \u201cAny time if it got hairy or stressful, I would just try and channel back to that year of learning with her and from her.\u201d Campion\u2019s \u201camazing bull**** radar\u201d helped Schneiderman cut the film into shape. If there was a scene or line that she hadn\u2019t quite convinced herself was necessary, \u201cJane will be like, \u2018So, why do you do that?\u2019 Or \u2018What do you mean by that?\u2019 And you\u2019re like, \u2018F***!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Campion who helped pinpoint Ani Palmer as a real talent. After Schneiderman sent her the tapes of those who had auditioned for Sid, Campion sent an email back. \u201cThis kid\u2019s got chutzpah,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI could watch her fold the laundry and it would be compelling.\u201d It\u2019s true: despite it being her acting debut, Palmer breezes through the Herculean task of appearing in every scene, as the film\u2019s \u201centire vessel,\u201d as Schneiderman says. She is magnetic, capturing the anxiety and confusion of adolescence with the flicker of an eye or a furrowed brow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"That kid\u2019s got chutzpah\u2026 Ani Palmer as Sid. (Blue Fox Entertainment)<\/p>\n

During the audition process, Schneiderman asked the actors to relay a time when they\u2019d felt shame, as Sid does. \u201cEveryone\u2019s shame story was something about, like, \u2018A guy I tried to kiss rejected me\u2019 or \u2018My bikini top fell off at the beach\u2019.\u201d Those were valid, she says, but Palmer\u2019s story \u201cwas about bringing, like, steamed buns to the friend hang out. She only had $5 to buy these steamed buns and then no one really ate them so she wanted to take the frozen steamed buns home with her.\u201d The quiet pang of embarrassment resonated. \u201cI don\u2019t know why but it f****** broke me. I felt the shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a small, subtle moment of pain, but that\u2019s sort of what Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry prioritises. \u201cI\u2019m kind of obsessed with the tiny tragedies of day-to-day life,\u201d Schneiderman says, a little impishly. When you\u2019re a confused teen, getting caught lying about sex or not being invited to the cool party becomes \u201cthe greatest tragedy\u201d in life. \u201cWhat is happening to Sid is the most defining, tumultuous s*** of her life to date and yet life goes on and it just keeps moving. I didn\u2019t want another trauma story.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no bow-tied ending, coming out scene or major catastrophe that Sid has to endure. She\u2019s just another queer teen making her way in the world, one beautiful mistep at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, we don\u2019t need to bleed or scream to warrant a place on screen now,\u201d Schneiderman says. \u201cOur foremother and fathers have done all that work for us and what a privileged position to be in that we can tell these softer, nuanced, ambiguous queer stories without having to go there, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry plays at BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival on 26, 28 and 29 March. Tickets available now<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up as a pre-teen in rural New Zealand, filmmaker Paloma Schneideman found herself with \u201clots of boyfriends\u201d.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[167394,146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-342037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bfi-flare","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}