The Little Sister (La Petite Dernière) is the third feature by actress-filmmaker Hafsia Herzi. This has been a remarkable year for Herzi. Not only did she win the César Award for Best Actress for Borgo earlier this year, but her own film The Little Sister premiered in Competition at Cannes, where it won Best Actress from a jury led by Juliette Binoche, as well as the Queer Palm.

Adapted from Fatima Daas’ 2020 autofiction novel The Last One, the film follows the coming out and coming of age of seventeen-year-old Fatima (Nadia Melliti) as she struggles to understand her sexuality. The youngest daughter in a French-Algerian family living in an immigrant-majority suburb, Fatima begins university in Paris while being pulled in different directions. Her religious background, her conservative household, her asthma, and her longing to feel wanted and loved all collide as she tries to understand herself.

It has been twelve years since Blue Is the Warmest Colour won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and what Herzi brings to this now familiar form of queer coming-of-age cinema is the perspective of a woman filmmaker. Lesbian films directed by men, such as Blue Is the Warmest Colour, have long been criticised for their male gaze, for turning lesbian desire into spectacle and framing women’s bodies to satisfy heterosexual fantasy. Herzi avoids this entirely. By centering Fatima’s perspective, she gives us a quiet, intimate portrait of a young woman who cannot yet speak openly about her sexuality. Herzi also resists the temptation to overdramatise the social pressures around Fatima. In another director’s hands, the religious context, the repeated talk of marriage at home or the homophobia at school would likely explode into melodrama. Herzi keeps everything grounded, including a lovely, understated scene set in La Mutinerie, one of Paris’s few lesbian bars.

However, this refusal to overplay every element can also work against the film. Because the film stays controlled and restrained, the emotional foundation sometimes feels underdeveloped. For a story titled La Petite Dernière (literally ‘the little last one’), the film does not spend enough time exploring Fatima’s relationship with her sisters. Those sibling dynamics could have added depth and texture to her journey. Sibling bonds differ from the more common parent-child framing found in many coming out films, and seeing Fatima navigate her place as the youngest girl in the family could have made her struggle richer and more layered. The emotional conclusion centres on a conversation between Fatima and her mother, but it arrives without the fuller groundwork that might have made their relationship feel more nuanced. It is not that the film needed to follow the mother-daughter style of Lady Bird, since the two films are aiming for different things, but a deeper look into Fatima’s family life could have given her internal conflict a stronger emotional base.

A special mention must go to Park Ji-min, who plays Ji-Na, Fatima’s love interest. Park, who previously gave an extraordinary performance in Return to Seoul, brings unexpected sharpness and vulnerability to Ji-Na. She plays a flawed lesbian character who is dealing with her own battles, including depression, and her presence gives the film much of its emotional complexity. She truly stands out.

Although traditional in its overall shape, The Little Sister is a tender and moving story. It offers more contemporary and sensitive queer representation without the male gaze, and it captures the texture of lesbian community and desire in Paris. It is both gentle and meaningful, and a welcome addition to modern queer cinema.

Screened as part of French Film Festival