A young foreign girl comes to LA to learn English but learns instead that life in the States is not what she saw on TV and film. She finds herself being dragged into a world not only foreign in language but completely outside her cultural values. Her only savior is the one person who does not rely on language for communication, a deaf artist.
I came across Urchin by chance and decided to watch it because of the title. It made me think of the spiky animal that lives at the bottom of the ocean, and the old Dickensian novels, where an urchin was an orphaned, homeless child in shaggy and dirty clothes.
The relationship between the characters is what makes this film stand out, and it’s just all-around fun.
Director Dana Ziyasheva made her directorial debut, 'Defenders of Life' which focuses on the Ngäbe community, and the hardships Ngäbe girls faced in Costa Rica.
The French-born director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s strategic choice to entrust the interpretation of a conventional, feminine character to a non-binary actor pays off: Corrin’s Lady Chatterley is awkward, edgy, and uninhibited at the same time.
A gentle coming of age story, Water Lilies takes its time in exploring what it’s like to be a young girl trying to make sense of her sexuality in a heteronormative world.
