“Queer adolescence is often portrayed as tragedy or triumph, but for many of us it is murkier than that”
BY DIVA STAFF, IMAGE BY NICOLA SANDFORD
For the 40th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival (18 to 29 March), the festival’s special presentation film is Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry. The story follows 14-year-old Sid Bookman’s transformative summer in rural New Zealand. Sid is in the awkward space between childhood and adolescence. She’s navigating her sexual curiosity, and she’s desperate for acceptance. She finds herself drawn to a group of wealthy out-of-towners who she tries to emulate, leading to chaos.
Ahead of this year’s festival, Paloma chats to DIVA about the importance of telling queer stories.
Why was it important for you to tell this story?
It felt quite urgent to me. Originally I wrote Big Girls Don’t Cry for my 14-year-old self. Not to comfort her, but to offer some kind of catharsis. She confused being desired with being seen. She didn’t yet have language for her queerness. She carried shame in her body without knowing where it came from. Over time, I realised the film isn’t just for her. It’s for anyone who still carries the imprint of adolescence. That liminal space where identity is fluid, desire is charged, and belonging feels like survival.
I wanted to tell a story that doesn’t moralise or tidy up those years. One that sits in the ambiguity and fantasy of it all, because queerness is directly tied to that for me. We don’t have a lot of examples of portraying that interior world through a queer female lens in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It felt important to make something that tells the truth about that messiness, and to hold it with empathy rather than judgement.
Was there a specific moment or reference point which inspired your film?
There wasn’t one singular moment. It was more a slow resurfacing of memory, and a collective conversation among my friends and communities. The more we spoke, these common threads kept appearing around shame, identity, and a deep loneliness at that age.
A language was slowly being built around what we had experienced, around things that at the time felt undefinable. The film felt like an extension of that process. A way of continuing to build language for the parts of ourselves we didn’t yet have words for. So I guess, like almost everything I’ve ever made, I was inspired by my best friends.
Did making this film change how you understand your own queerness?
Making the film required me to sit with parts of myself I had previously rushed past. I began to see how much of my adolescence was shaped by performance, by trying on identities in order to be chosen, rather than asking what I actually wanted. Revisiting Sid’s story softened something in me. It allowed me to hold my younger self with more compassion.
BFI Flare is a celebration of LGBTQIA+ storytelling. What do you hope LGBTQIA+ audiences at BFI Flare take away after watching your film?
I hope they feel recognised, seen, maybe even a little relief, especially in the grey areas. Queer adolescence is often portrayed as tragedy or triumph, but for many of us it is murkier than that. It is fantasy before language. Silence as protection. Wanting to be chosen so badly that you override your own instincts. If audiences leave feeling a little less alone in those contradictions, that would mean a lot to us.
BFI is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. What LGBTQIA+ film from the last four decades has changed your life and why?
I think Portrait Of A Lady On Fire made a lasting impact on me. Not because it’s loud, but because of its restraint. The gaze in that film is so intentional. Desire is treated with patience and gravity. It is about being seen in a way that feels almost spiritual. It showed me that queer cinema can live in stillness. In glances. In what is withheld. That gave me the courage to trust quiet tension in my own storytelling and to allow silence to carry meaning.
Why is it so vital that we continue to support and celebrate spaces like BFI Flare for the next 40 years?
Queer stories are still contested terrain. We may feel culturally progressive, but shame and erasure have not disappeared; it’s just shifted shape. And we all know there are many places in the world right now where it is becoming less and less safe to express your queerness openly. Art, and spaces like BFI Flare, have always sat at the centre of dismantling that kind of prejudice. It allows people to feel before they argue. To recognise themselves in someone else’s experience, to create lineage. You sit in a cinema and realise you are part of something larger than yourself, part of a continuum of voices that came before and will come after. That’s special, that’s vital.
BFI Flare has been running since 1986. What do you think queer audiences in 1986 would make of your film?
I hope they would recognise it, and recognise themselves in it. The textures might feel contemporary, but the emotional core is not new. Longing, secrecy, confusion, shame, desire. Those feelings have always been there, intrinsic to the queer experience.
Why do you think LGBTQIA+ filmmaking is so important in 2026?
I feel like visibility alone is no longer enough. We are in a moment where representation can become flattened into something marketable and safe. What feels urgent now is depth and specificity. Emotional risk. LGBTQIA+ filmmaking in 2026 has the opportunity to move beyond proving that we exist, and instead exploring who we are, in full, flawed, unapologetic 3D.
The 40th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival takes place 18 – 29 March at BFI Southbank. Big Girls Don’t Cry premieres at BFI Flare on 26 March. You can find out more about BFI Flare here: whatson.bfi.org.uk/flare
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