A 7-year-old plays adult in a hair salon where desire and innocence collide.
Melissa is a young girl searching for love. In an overly sexualized world, her attempts are doomed to failure. She tries to imitate adults, but does not understand what she really desires. Thus, she experiences the pleasure and pain of eroticism in her mother's hair salon.
Direction
Ünsal frames childhood through mirrors—literally and figuratively.
Acting
Machens delivers chilling naturalism; you forget she's performing.
Director
Figen Ünsal
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Figen Ünsal based the salon on her own childhood in Turkish-German immigrant communities, where beauty rituals became language for women isolated by language barriers.
The film sparked debate at Cannes Critics' Week about whether depicting child sexualization—even critically—constitutes exploitation. Ünsal refused to answer, citing Melissa's right to her own interpretation.
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