Caroline Vignal continues a popular theme this year by exploring family relationships and social pressures. Les Autres Filles stars Julie Leclercq as Solange, a 15-year-old girl who lives with her parents in a village just outside Toulouse. Her father is doing the best he can, trying to keep his ostrich-breeding operation afloat, but it's a tough business. Her mother, meanwhile, is as flighty as her husband's birds are flightless, and she does whatever she can to get out of their claustrophobic family situation.

Solange is training to be a hairdresser, and when she enrols at technical college she falls in with a crowd who start to shape her adolescent outlook. In particular she meets Gary, a streetwise African girl, who becomes her guide through the teenage jungle. Gary's friends are outgoing, extrovert and sexually daring. Compared to them, Solange feels frumpy and old-fashioned and becomes consumed with guilt over the fact that she hasn't had sex yet. Bowing to peer pressure, she becomes impatient and starts tobe obsessed with the idea of losing her virginity so that she can, at last, be like "the other girls" of the title.

Les Autre Filles marks the festival and feature debut of short film director Vignal, who is no stranger to acclaim. Her 1998 film Solene Change La Tête was a big hit on the short film circuit, including Clermont-Ferrand. The follow-up Roule Ma Poule received several prizes, including the Canal Plus prize in Grenoble. Making the leap into full-length movies is clearly no source of angst for this talented young film-maker.

Steve Grayson