GIRL AMERICA

A woman returns to the places where she grew up, confronting memories she has spent her life trying to escape. Some come back as vivid, colourful images; others hit like blows. As a child in communist Czechoslovakia, Ema is passed through orphanages, foster care and juvenile institutions. Abandoned by the adults who should have protected her, she learns to survive in a world governed by rules, punishment and loneliness.

Yet throughout it all she holds on to one powerful idea: somewhere in America, her father is waiting for her. That belief becomes her source of strength. Through childhood, adolescence, the fall of communism and the difficult freedom that follows, Ema falls again and again — and each time finds a way to stand back up. Told through a highly stylised world of colour, movement and fragmented memory, Girl America transforms one woman's traumatic childhood into a story about resilience, imagination and the extraordinary power of hope.