Tuesday 10 November 2026
Big Girls Don’t Cry, the acclaimed debut feature from New Zealand writer-director Paloma Schneideman, arrives in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 27 November. Executive produced by Jane Campion, it stars newcomer Ani Palmer alongside Noah Taylor and Rain Spencer. The film is released by Peccadillo Pictures, and The Guardian has given it four stars, calling it “Deeply satisfying”. Here are five things to know.
1. A coming-of-age story set in 2006 New Zealand
It’s the summer holidays in rural New Zealand in 2006, and 14-year-old Sid has nothing to fill them. Her father has checked out, and her only window onto a bigger life is a borrowed MSN account. Online and off, she watches the older teens who seem to move through the world so easily, and tries on their attitudes like stolen clothes. What she feels for them is part envy, part something she doesn’t yet have the words for. Over one transformative summer, Sid discovers desire, identity and the internet, imitating the people she longs to be loved by.
2. Jane Campion is behind it
The film is executive produced by Jane Campion, the director of The Power of the Dog and The Piano, alongside Philippa Campbell, with Vicky Pope and Thomas Coppell producing. Campion also acted as a mentor to Schneideman. She reminded the director that Sid needed “an innate charisma, someone you could watch do absolutely nothing and still be fascinating,” and Schneideman found exactly that in Ani Palmer. “About seven seconds into her first tape, I felt it: the stillness, the vulnerability, the unspoken pull,” Schneideman says. The press notes describe Palmer’s lead performance as fearless.
3. Big festival wins and a Kristen Stewart seal of approval
Big Girls Don’t Cry premiered at Sundance and had its UK premiere at BFI Flare, before winning the Grand Prix at the Nouvelles Vagues festival in Biarritz. Presenting the award, actor and director Kristen Stewart, star of Love Lies Bleeding and director of The Chronology of Water, said: “I loved this film with my whole heart.” The film recently opened at home in New Zealand to critical acclaim. The Guardian, which gave it four stars and called it “Deeply satisfying”, also noted that “Schneideman gets the small moments just right.”
4. A deeply personal film
Schneideman drew on her own adolescence for the story, which she says has been five years in the making. In her director’s note she writes: “I made Big Girls Don’t Cry for my 14-year-old self. Not for comfort, but for catharsis.” She also says: “Somewhere, in some patch of bush in some country, there’s a girl doing something she doesn’t want to do, just to be accepted by people she doesn’t even like.” The film explores queer adolescence, shame and desire, and Schneideman says it holds up a mirror to that time “not to moralise, but to acknowledge it: it was messy, confusing, joyful and painful.”
5. A familiar face and a rising star
Alongside newcomer Ani Palmer, the cast includes Noah Taylor, known for Peaky Blinders and Almost Famous, and Rain Spencer, from Good Girl Jane and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Rich in period detail and unflinching in its honesty, it’s billed as a coming-of-age film for anyone who remembers being fourteen, and for anyone still not entirely sure they’ve worked themselves out. It runs for 99 minutes and is rated 15. If you’re in London, there’s a preview screening at The Arzner on Wednesday 11 November, with a Q&A with Paloma Schneideman.
Tickets and info
Big Girls Don’t Cry
In UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 27 November 2026
Preview screening with director Q&A: Wednesday 11 November, The Arzner, London
Writer-director: Paloma Schneideman
Cast: Ani Palmer, Rain Spencer, Noah Taylor
Running time: 99 minutes
Certificate: 15
Distributor: Peccadillo Pictures
Check your local cinema for times and prices