Being a teenage is awkward, uncomfortable, and cringey. It’s a phase of life that once we leave, we hope to never experience again. Yet once we’re far enough removed from that stage, we can begin to look back on it fondly and give ourselves a little bit of grace.
Paloma Schneideman’s new film “Big Girls Don’t Cry” captures unpleasant adolescent experiences in a unique, refreshing way within the standard coming-of-age format that audiences have become familiar with.
Over the course of one summer, 14-year-old Sid Bookman discovers her identity, desire, and 2000’s culture all while yearning to be loved. The film brilliantly captures the delicate nature of the early teen years, and the feelings of being caught between childhood innocence and a sexually appealing adulthood. With authentic performances, wit and charm perfectly interwoven with confrontational moments, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” is sure to remind audiences of the best and worst parts of their own early years.
Cinema Femme sat down with writer and director Paloma Schneideman to talk about “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, the 2000’s, and creating an unconventional coming of age story.
I would love to hear a bit about your career in your own words. Where you started, how you got to “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, and where you hope to go in the future?
Well, I fell in love with movies when I was a teenager, when I got my first job at a cinema. It was very cool for a rural kid that had nothing to do, I just consumed so much film, and figured out pretty early on that I would spend my life in service to storytelling in whatever way, be it writing, directing, music, theater, dance. I went to film school, and I made some shorts, and I made some music videos, and I worked in film distribution, and I just always stayed adjacent. I became a musician, and then I learned how to score for dance shows and theater makers, and that always was expensive or would help me grow my craft when you learn other crafts, obviously.
Then I had this idea for this film in 2019 and had just been slowly chipping away, and it all shifted. I got into this mentorship program run by Jane Campion, our national treasure female filmmaker, and for a year I was allowed to explore material and train for the feature. We got funded at the end of 2024. We shot in April 2025, cutting throughout that year, and then got into Sundance in a really surprising way, and the rest has been kind of crazy, just playing around the world. So it’s been awesome. 14-year-old me would be pinching myself to know that this is how things turned out. But yeah, I think I’ll just continue to tell my stories that I hope resonate with other people that are often about queer and female experiences, and try and tell quiet stories that can have big feelings.
I think it’s always interesting to discuss where the idea for a film begins. What was the seed that grew into “Big Girls Don’t Cry”?
The seed was probably female shame and where does it begin? I’m like, “Oh, that shame that we all feel but can’t articulate where it came from. Let’s unpack that a little bit.” But yeah, I think it was also just reckoning with my own adolescence and also I think probably processing parental relationships and being like, “Sometimes all you need is just a hug from your parent and won’t fix everything, but it sure is nice.” And then I guess reverse engineering the film from there.
The film is set in the early 2000’s. What went into deciding that?
Well, I guess just that was when I grew up, so all the artifacts of the time were very vivid and me, which makes it helpful when you’re directing a film and you can talk to the production design and the costume and all that quite accurately. But then also the 2000s was such a crazy time for technology and pop culture. And in many ways, I think now in 2026, we are swinging back to the 2000s. We’re almost having revisiting it with this wave of nostalgia and a simpler time because obviously people that grow up in the 2000s know life pre and post internet, which will never happen again. Everyone that grows up now is going to have the internet their whole life. And so I think it’s created this kind of scarring on our psyches about a simpler time and what all that technology and pop culture culminated and how that would fear when you’ve got a girl who’s coming of age at the same time.
So yeah, it was a combo of truth and tension.
What 2000’s inspiration did you have for the film? Musically, visually or stylistically?
Yeah, I mean heaps. I was a couch potato of a child that just watched TV all day. And when MTV came to New Zealand, that was wild to me. I was just obsessed with “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” and “The Real World” and “Pimp My Ride.” It was a big hip hop moment for us in New Zealand. We just started to absorb hip hop culture. So all that was very prominent, but also we’re New Zealand, so we are always kind of a little bit further behind and a little bit off with our choices. So all that stuff like the knee length board shorts and surf wear and skatewear. We were all wearing that even though none of us could surf and skate.
The film is a typical coming of age in so many ways, and yet plays with the genre conventions. How did you take the coming of age format and develop it into something more unique and deep?
I mean, I think the coming of age genre is such an established one because we all acknowledge that these rituals and rites of passage that we all go through that look different in each country or each demographic, but they feel the same. And I think that’s something I was always very clear about. I wasn’t ever trying to reinvent the wheel. This is a coming of age story, but what makes it unique is the New Zealand lens to it and the queer lens that never is defined by anything. It’s like the queerness is there and it’s present and it’s ambiguous, but it’s not the defining factor of the film. And I think, at least for me, so much of my adolescence wasn’t about knowing who I was or being defined by an identity. It was about just really desperately moving through all the versions of self, trying to figure out which one I was.
And I think I wanted to be honest about that with this film was just not having the answers and just the desperation and the loneliness of that time. So yeah, I think that’s really its point of difference is just how nuanced and idiosyncratic it is to a New Zealand experience. And I think that specificity breeds the universality.
This film gracefully weaves together cringey coming of age moments, with moments of honesty and vulnerability. How did you find the balance between these two elements of the film?
Think it’s that notion of shame that I was really interested in and telling the stories is one of the first defining words we found for this film was shame, and that really cracked open the DNA of the film. And I think that is that you cannot have bravery without shame. And I think I wanted to show a character that was both just cringey, embarrassing things, but from a place of bravery, which is almost the antidote to shame. And I mean, it’s just so teenage. All you know is what you know, and everything feels like such a big deal because the only context you have is the short years you’ve lived. And I wanted to position that so many of my favorite filmmakers do, the greatest tragedy is also nothing. It means nothing and life just keeps moving. I think that’s the teenage cringe part of it all is everyone thinks they’re their own main character and the world revolves around them and then you just realize it’s just all part of it.
In this day in age, most auditions and chemistry reads are held online, and it seems like a challenge to organically find compatible pairs. How did you piece together such a compatible cast?
The only times we were doing things over Zoom was with our international talents, so Noah Taylor and Rain Spencer. But even through that, me as the director and them spent a lot of time talking and having assignments or explorations. But in terms of the actual cast, other than the initial tapes that I watched online, everything was done in person. We had a very long and rigorous chemistry and audition and rehearsal process because that’s, to me, the most important part of directing is just I’m an actor’s director and if I don’t believe something, I know the audience isn’t going to believe it, and I really find it hard to sit in anything that feels dishonest. And so yeah, we had lots of big workshops where we brought in 20 teenagers and there was three of each guy and three of each girl, and we just mix them up and mash them around until we found the perfect combination.
What song would you say best describes “Big Girls Don’t Cry”?
It’s funny because I think everybody would want me to say “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie, but I don’t actually think that’s the right song. God, what would be the right song? Oh my gosh, I’m usually really good at this, but…
There is a song I used to listen that was originally written into the script, but for whatever reasons, everything changed. But there’s a song by Little Dragon called “Butterflies”, and it’s kind of, I guess, about metamorphosis and it’s both hopeful and melancholic. And I think that’s probably the song that best describes this film.
Cinema Femme highlights female and gender expansive creatives in the industry. Could you talk a bit about how your journey has been as a female creative?
I mean, I am very lucky to have had a lot of strong women and genderqueer folk wrap around me my entire career. I think not everyone is privileged like that, and lots of people feel quite lonely in their journey, but I’ve had many mentors such as Jane Campion and my producer, Vicki Pope, and Aman Balentine, and these people that have just seen something in me for whatever reason and been so generous to allow me to learn from them and observe and absorb. And it’s never been met with any scarcity complex or competitiveness.
And it’s the same for my community, my best friends who are all queer and artists, and we have very much if one of us succeeds, we all succeed mentality. So I feel very empowered and lifted up by my community, and my hope is to be able to give that back to other people from my community as I move forward. But it’s so important, I think, to have the spirit of generosity and share where you can and help where you can. And that’s something I’ve always found has been very fertile amongst female and queer creatives and gender expansive creators. So yes, I hope that is a long-living mentality
What are you hoping audiences take away from the film?
I honestly hope that they give themselves permission to revisit their own coming of age experiences or their own first experiences of desire and identity, and honestly look back to that inner child or younger self with just a bit of kindness and care and a bit of forgiveness, and maybe not even necessarily for yourself, but for other people around you too. Yeah, I guess it’s just empathy would be my hope, and an openness to talk about things. I think that’s really a big part of why I wanted to make this film, was to embolden people to be able to share experiences from what can be quite a painful time.
