My Gay Sister
2017 · 15m · Sweden
Directed by Lia Hietala
Genres: coming-of-age, family, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Ten-year-old Cleo joins her older sister and the sister's girlfriend on a road trip north, asking what it means to be in love.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
On paper this reads like the most consensus indie move possible—queer coming-of-age, wholesome road trip, a kid learning about love—but Hietala refuses to make it easy or sentimental, letting awkwardness and real family friction breathe instead of wrapping everything in soft focus.
A deliberate work that inherits from the tradition of films like *Moonlight* and *Portrait of a Lady on Fire*—not in plot but in its commitment to letting intimacy be observed rather than explained, each frame considered as a quiet argument about what deserves the camera's attention.
The film lives or dies on Cleo's face, and the specific choice to keep her mostly silent—letting her absorb and process rather than narrate her epiphany—transforms what could have been a saccharine lesson into something genuinely felt and earned.