Young Critics Lab

22 décembre 2025

Interview with Urška Djukić

By Siri Vaara and Marine Mossot

The first feature film by Slovenian director Urška Djukić, Little Trouble Girls, won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Les Arcs Film Festival. The film follows Lucija (played by Jara Sofija Ostan) as she experiences a sexual awakening during a choir rehearsal retreat in a monastery. We asked Urška Djukić about her portrayal of sexuality and spirituality in the movie.

Siri Vaara: Have you experienced the feelings portrayed in the film yourself? 

Growing up, I felt a lot of guilt and shame about my body. Society tells you how “good girls” should behave. At the same time, the boys were treated differently. I didn’t feel good about that. Later, I realized it’s an artificially created mechanism. In some ancient societies, feelings of guilt and shame didn’t exist. They are constructed by patriarchal society and don’t help us at all. They just restrain us, so we need to talk about it and remove it from our society, if possible.

SV: The Sonic Youth song Little Trouble Girl plays a significant role, too. 

When I first heard it, I felt understood. It just sums up the film perfectly, as well as the idea that girls need to learn to pretend in order to be accepted. As girls, we are natural actors because society expects us to be. But we also have this destructive female nature inside of us that will always be there. I knew I also wanted to use the song as the film’s title.

SV: The masturbation scene is very subtle – the camera is close, focusing on her shoulders and neck. What is your approach to depicting sex?

I wanted to do something we hadn’t seen before. I didn’t want to add a lot of emotion; just capture this gentle sensuality. When we get so close with the camera, we see everything. The body tells the story. We don’t need to see the whole picture. It was a real discovery for me, and it was so cool to shoot that scene. We left Jara Sofija alone in the toilet with the camera. Of course, we talked about it at length beforehand. When I saw how amazing her neck looked, we just moved the camera closer. It was an amazing discovery of the body.

SV: What are your thoughts on how sex is usually portrayed in cinema?

In Slovenia, I really struggled with the standards that male directors were imposing on women. They always had to look perfect, even when they woke up, and they were always naked, even when it was cold! Growing up, I thought it wasn’t realistic. It was just the desire of some men. I didn’t find any good depictions of sexuality in Slovenian cinema. Directors avoid this topic because it’s taboo and some don’t use sex effectively. I think it has to be necessary for a film, not just something that people want to see. 

Marine Mossot: The movie depicts nuns doing everything by themselves. They do their own gardening and DIY, and they take care of the place without men. Would you describe their community as feminist?

That’s an interesting point of view. In the past, there’ve been groups of women who have chosen to live together in remote locations because they didn’t like the rules. I’ve always wanted to ask the nuns why they chose this kind of life, but they didn’t really talk about it openly. I can understand that some of them had some deeper spiritual connections, but that doesn’t mean everyone should serve men, as Virgin Mary seems to be telling us.

MM: The film highlights the contrast between love for a woman. On one hand, there’s the adoration of the Virgin Mary – on the other, lesbianism. Are religion and the LGBTQ+ community compatible?

I definitely think so. Spirituality is a very personal thing and it resides within each of us; it has nothing to do with institutions like the Church. It’s good we have institutions that want to support spirituality – unless they create rules that go against our nature. We have to look inside ourselves and consider how we really feel. Mostly, we just observe what happens outside. But there’s a whole rollercoaster inside our body – it’s like a whole movie. If we learn to listen more carefully to this inner guidance, we will understand the world and ourselves better. Our body is intelligent and sometimes this intelligence is more important than that of the mind.

MM: We can really feel this connection to the body in Little Trouble Girls, also because it engages all our senses. We can hear all the sounds that usually get erased in cinema: the buzz of flies, breathing, wind. What was your main goal with these sound effects?

I wanted to create a sensual, bodily experience that focuses the perspective inside the body and on all the things we feel. The sound is much more important than we tend to think. Of course, there’s music, but even inaudible vibrations can influence how we feel and react. In my work, I always put a lot of emphasis on the sound, which can sometimes be even more important than the image.

MM: Could you say a few words to encourage women to direct movies?

It’s very important. Now that we have the chance to speak up – at least in this part of the world – we must do it. Our emancipation is still in its infancy. A hundred years ago, women were still very much enslaved by the patriarchy. Now, many conservatives still want to control their reproductive rights and bodies. We have to fight against it. Otherwise, we will go backwards.