Funny Business: Week 2 of the 47th San Francisco International Film Festival

Girl Trouble
(United States, 2004)

San Francisco Weekly
April 21, 2004

By Michael Fox

Over the course of four harrowing years, local filmmakers Lidia Szajko and Lexi Leban followed three teenage girls who'd run afoul of San Francisco's juvenile justice system. The teens grapple with drugs, pregnancy, screwed-up parents, and abusive boyfriends while mustering a distinctive brand of grit and resilience. By turns heart-wrenching and inspiring, the movie does a terrific job of conveying the girls' nightmarishly complicated situations without demonizing judges and prosecutors or sentimentalizing its subjects. In a just world, this documentary would match Hoop Dreams' epic three-hour duration; instead, its abridged length underscores its key theme that girls at risk get short shrift compared to the boys. This valuable picture also features the remarkable Lateefah Simon, a single mom in her early 20s and the executive director of the locally based Center for Young Women's Development.

Saturday, April 24, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; Monday, April 26, 1 p.m., AMC Kabuki; Tuesday, April 27, 4:15 p.m., AMC Kabuki

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