Waiting for Ben
2011 · 8m
Directed by Maria Cortese
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, humorous, tender
Three underage girls attempt to talk their way into a nightclub to meet a boy named Ben, navigating with mounting awkwardness the gap between the adult independence they want and the adolescence they still inhabit.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Three underage girls trying to get into a club. Honest, observational, no judgment — that's actually a hard register to hit, and the 5D-everything production tells me it's a student film. But the premise has the texture of real adolescence, not its cliché.
Cortese's observational patience with her teenage subjects situates Waiting for Ben in the European coming-of-age tradition; the country of origin requires further confirmation before definitive festival contextualization is possible.
Three underage girls trying to get into a club — Maria Cortese observing them with ethnographic patience rather than ironic distance. The refusal of judgment is the moral choice; modest production but the instinct is right.