Essex Girls
2023 · 15m · UK
Directed by T A P E COLLECTIVE
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: provocative, tender
Set in 2009 Essex, the film follows Bisola, a British-Nigerian teenager navigating female friendship, identity, and constant microaggressions while coming of age.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Timi-Biu and Ige have built a film where the act of reclamation is inseparable from the act of portraiture — Essex Girls is community cinema in the most precise sense.
Black British girlhood in 2009 Benfleet, written by its lead from autobiography — the stereotype inversion is earned by the source. T A P E Collective doesn't make safe choices. Genuine.
Lead actress Busayo Ige writing from autobiography to invert the cultural shorthand — that's the kind of authorship that earns the comparisons to Rocks. Fifteen minutes of magical Black British girlhood in 2009 Benfleet sounds genuinely specific.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2024
- BFI London Film Festival 2023, Best Narrative Short