The Girls are Alright

“I was born into a family of women. I have always been drawn to stories about groups of women living together—despairing, admiring, envying one another; braiding each other’s hair. From The Heroides to The House of Bernarda Alba, from Sleeping Beauty to Victorian Tales, women wait, wish, dream, and imagine. They grow impatient, write letters, or pull each other’s hair in a kind of sisterhood that is both nurturing and imposed.

A few years ago, I experienced my own kind of confinement with five women. We spent days and nights together, gathered around a bed, waiting for the inevitable: my father’s passing. That waiting felt eerily familiar, like stepping into the stories that had always captivated me—a prophecy of sorts. The Girls Are Alright was born from those days, from that image.

This project is also a meeting point for the two passions that have shaped my life: theater and cinema. It is driven by the hope that something alive and unique can emerge from their interplay, combining cinema’s ability to capture life with theater’s rituality and evocative power.

At its core, The Girls Are Alright is a story about the creative process, collaboration, doubts, and contradictions of a group of actresses and how they are transformed by the materials of the play they rehearse.

It is both a period film and a contemporary one. Without abandoning literary stylization, it remains fresh and grounded, portraying the lives of five young women coexisting in a country house. It explores their fears and triumphs, their personal and romantic struggles, their small rivalries, and their bonds of solidarity.

The Girls Are Alright is a work of fiction with an essayistic spirit, fluid and free in its approach to genre. Its characters are multifaceted: fragile, brave, clumsy, funny, and utterly human.”

– Itsaso Arana, Director