Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan & Dawn Valadez
2008, 86 minutes
Going on 13 will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival April 23–May 4 2008 in New York City.
About the Film
From Tweety Bird to Bow Wow, double dutch to chatrooms, Daddy’s girls to first deceptions, watch as Ariana, Isha, Rosie, and Esme let go of childhood and fumble—or sprint—toward an uncertain future. This is puberty and for each of these girls of color, it’s a whirlwind of change and new choices. Without flinching, Going on 13 enters their world as they negotiate the precious, precarious moments between being a little girl and becoming a young woman.
Four years with four girls in California’s Bay Area. Meet Esmeralda (Esme), Mexican-American, first to complete her daily schoolwork and also first in her class to have a “boyfriend” without her parents’ knowledge; Ariana, African-American, who transforms from a tomboy into one of the “popular girls” as her family struggles to leave the poverty of West Oakland; Rosie, mixed race Latina, who, at nine, is precocious and sunny, but grows into an alienated pre-teen who may have to repeat the sixth grade due to chronic truancy; and Isha, an immigrant from India, who despite her devotion to her traditional family, explores Internet teen chatrooms with user names like “ghetto girl” and “cutie pie.”
Director’s Statement
If there were any rules about documentary filmmaking, we probably broke them all.
One social worker, one filmmaker, and one very ambitious idea: to follow girls over the course of four years as they became teenagers. Knowing that production alone would take so many years, we decided two things: one, we would have to pace ourselves; two, we would be making it up as we went along. This included a shooting schedule that allowed us to keep our day jobs, becoming very close to our “subjects,” and leaving the confines of a strictly observational cinema to either chat, hang out, or answer the girls’ own questions about growing up.
Some things never change. We all go through puberty. We all emerge transformed. These are the universals.
