The representation of childhood in two contemporary films: Estiu 1993 and Systemsprenger.

Childhood became a popular subject in many contemporary films, especially after the 1960s. In this presentation, we are interested in the representation of childhood in films directed by women, from the perspective of the narrative construction, while also considering the form in which the stories are developed with young female characters in the centre. We will discuss two films from different countries: Estiu 1993 (Summer, 1993, 2017), by Clara Simón and Systemsprenger (System crasher, 2019), by Nora Fingschseid. We will analyse the narrative construction in which girl characters find their own mode of cinematic enunciation. Following this direction, we will also focus our attention on cinematic storytelling (Lury, 2010; Lebeau, 2008; Buckland, 2021), in order to analyse the narrative discourse and we will use references from social science (James, 2007; Qvortrup, 2008; Malone, Tesar & Arndt, 2020) to understand whether the filmmakers bring a new perspective to the cultural representation of childhood.