It has been said that the search for self-preservation is an “act of political warfare”, a claim that sums up the search by Jennifer Reeder herself – who featured in the 2015 Curtas Festival with “Blood Below the Skin” – in this film, in the sense that a “personal struggle” unfolds alongside a “political struggle” (the individual and the collective, as two sides of the same coin) involving the affirmation of women and the rejection of the “invisible” status historically conferred on them by society, whether in more traditional situations (the family, political power, economic power), or in simple situations such as skateboarding. It is no accident that the finger which the girl injures when skating is the middle finger, as symbolic as it is subversive in “giving the finger” to machismo and its normalisation in society, expressed here in plastic terms (the skate park reserved for men during the day and used “clandestinely”, at night by girls). The collective sublimation of this individual “finger” operates as a feminist as fuck rebellion (the slogan on one of the girls’ t-shirts) which, in occupying a skate park (“occupying” a territory as a classic political act), also serves to resolve the inner emotional needs of the main character. In this portrayal of a voyage to self-discovery and breakthrough that is growth, Reeder also challenges the conventional western view from the outset, through the complicity she establishes between the assertion of feminism and the wearing of the hijab. (FN)