Urška Djukic was watching a Catholic girls choir singing a Slovenian folk song when she first got the inspiration to make her debut film Little Trouble Girls, Slovenia’s submission for the International Feature Film Oscar race.

“It was an amazing experience for me, and I felt very touched by it, and I didn’t really understand why,” the writer-director said during Deadline’s Contenders Films: International panel. “Of course, the music was amazing … but there was also something else there. It was this awakening of these young girls’ voices that were fully open.

“Throughout history,” she added, “women’s voices were so repressed. In the first row [of the church], I remember seeing three priests sitting there who were really enjoying the performance. For me, it was a very contradictory image – these men in celibacy versus hearing these voices so open. I knew there was something I had to explore deeper.”

Little Trouble Girls follows Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan), a 16-year-old introvert who joins her Catholic school’s all-girls choir. She befriends Ana-Maria (Mina Švajge), a popular and flirty third-year student. But when the choir travels to the countryside convent for a weekend of intensive rehearsals, Lucia’s interest in a dark-eyed restoration worker tests her friendship with Ana-Maria and the other girls.

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As she navigates unfamiliar surroundings and her budding sexuality, Lucia begins to question her beliefs and values, disrupting the harmony within the choir. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival back in February, and Kino Lorber will release it in the U.S.

Sofija Ostan admitted that she didn’t have much experience singing before joining the film. “I wouldn’t consider myself to be a good singer, even know,” she said.

“But it was interesting to learn how to use your body for the sound to come out,” she said during the panel. “That’s also what Urška explored a little bit in this film. The process was really interesting. Singing was a big part of this role because Lucia also finds her safe space when singing and finds her voice, and it helps open her up. So it was really important that she looked free and relaxed when singing, which I probably didn’t at the start.”

Director of photography Lev Predan Kawarski said during the panel that he was involved from the rehearsal stage in the project, which helped shape the way he shot the film.

“We started talking really early on about what this world was going to look like, and we knew that it was going to be the point of view of a young teenage girl growing up, coming of age,” he said.

He continued: “A big part of the process was also me being involved very early on. So I started coming to rehearsals six months before shooting. I was present at all of them and started exploring the camera a little bit. … It all came together really fluidly.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.