Schoolgirls

**The silence that changed everything**

Summer of 1992. A convent school in Zaragoza. Nine 11-year-old girls repeat the same gesture: they cross themselves before entering the classroom, recite the catechism without blinking, and remain silent when the teacher reminds them that "the devil lurks in jeans". *Schoolgirls* (2020), by Pilar Palomero, is not just a film about pre-Olympic Spain; it's a mirror that reflects, with crudeness and tenderness, the stolen childhood of entire generations.

Palomero, a debutante in feature films, signs an intimate drama that avoids manichaeism. There are no villainous nuns or cardboard heroines: there are women trapped in a system that suffocates them all, although some are aware of it and others are not. The camera clings to the faces of the little girls —especially that of the protagonist, Celia, played by Andrea Fandos with a restraint that hurts— and captures those micro-gestures that betray fear: the tremble of a hand when fastening the uniform, the whisper of a forbidden question. The director does not judge; she shows. And that, in recent Spanish cinema, is almost an act of rebellion.

The Goyas agreed: Best Film and Best Direction in 2021. But the awards, here, are the least important thing. What remains is that scene in which Celia, for the first time, looks at herself in the mirror with pants that are not the school uniform. There is no epic music, no grandiose speeches. Only the sound of her breathing and the weight of a decision that, for her, is as huge as it is silent. This is how *Schoolgirls* works: it doesn't shout, but it breaks you in two.

It's not nostalgia. It's memory. And it hurts because it's still necessary.

Pilar Palomero films the oppression in a convent school with tenderness and crudeness. Impacting.

" Shut up! — Sor Lucía