Sisters are doing it for themselves in Houda Benyamina's revelatory first feature, an energetic drama that is both an urgent and a playful zeitgeist film about what it is to be young, female and Muslim in the Parisian banlieues.Teenage best friends Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) endure their delimited lives in the suburbs by dreaming big and engaging in small-time petty thievery - a favorite ploy is to don loose-fitting burqas and shoplift, hiding their booty in the folds of their garments. Possessed of a joie de vivre that is intoxicating and infectious, the young rebels become involved with the older Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda)-a serious criminal who soon has them selling drugs and stealing gasoline-and Benyamina's tone passes from irreverence into something much darker...

"Benyamina bursts onto the scene with a punchy, pacy directorial debut, [which plays as a] gangster thriller and female buddy movie... A career-making film... Funny, often suspenseful and always emotionally involving... Amamra is a knockout as Dounia..." Catherine Bray, Variety

Winner: Camera d'Or, Cannes; Audience Award, New Auteurs, AFI