This tender coming-out drama blessed with a star-making lead turn won the Queer Palm as well as the Best Actress Award for Nadia Melliti at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Seventeen-year-old Fatima (Nadia Melliti) is the youngest – and quietest – of three sisters in a vibrant, suburban French-Algerian home: a daughter devoted to football, family and study, with an approved Muslim boyfriend by her side. When she begins studying philosophy in Paris, however, she starts dating women, including the charismatic but troubled Ji-Na (Ji-Min Park, Return to Seoul, MIFF 2022; A Private Life, MIFF 2025). Embarking on a journey of self-discovery, Fatima has to balance her sexual awakening with her traditional upbringing, and make sense of how her desires and faith can be reconciled.

Two-time César-winning French actor Hafsia Herzi (Couscous; House of Tolerance) brings a sure directorial hand to her delicate tale of self-discovery, co-scripted with Fatima Haas in an adaptation of the latter’s 2020 autofiction novel The Last One. Offering a warm-hearted, well-judged portrait of a personal and erotic transformation, it features a brilliant, magnetic lead performance from newcomer Melliti that was duly awarded with the top acting prize at Cannes.

“Vibrantly felt yet impressively controlled – and blessed with a stone-cold stunner of a central performance – The Little Sister is indeed an instant classic of the genre, as moving in its humanism as it is sexy.” – The Hollywood Reporter