Lollipop Monster

Ari and Oona. Two 15-year-old girls, two dysfunctional families. Absolute opposites and yet somehow similar. No one listens, no one hears. Ari feels she is misunderstood and compensates for this by having sex with unknown men; Oona expresses the pain over her beloved father’s suicide through self-mutilation and morbid drawings. Opposites attract. Ari is a blonde who paints herself up like a canary, Oona loves things as black as night. Their unlikely friendship helps them survive the hypocrisy of their families. Ari finally gains some kind of self-respect, and Oona learns to give vent to her pain. Then something happens that threatens their friendship at its very roots.... The scope of the debuting director’s creative interests is evident both in the mix of cinematic devices that enrich the narration (animated passages, amateur film recordings, music videos), as well as in the artistic stylization, which directly references her grounding in comics. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)