cinematography
William Rexer
editing
Sofía Subercaseaux
music
Daniel Blumberg
production design
Sam Bader
costumes
Reid Bartelme
Harriet Jung

cast
Amanda Seyfried (The Girls)
Ryan Van Compernolle
(The Puppet)
Catherine Clifford
(The Puppeteer)
Natalie Shinnick
(Puppeteer)
Abi Lieff (Nun)
Molly Longwell (Nun)
Isabella Werber (Nun)
Mia Lastrella (Nun)

production
Hi Production
M+M Productions
producers
Max Brun
Maddie Browning

A stately boarding school in Italy. Sunrise and mist. The building seems uninhabited, shuttered and cold. We see two figures awake in the same bed: one is a life-sized doll, the other its all-white masked puppeteer. Others – exactly the same kind of pairing – start their day in the dormitory by putting on clothes. This is daily routine, this requires discipline. The camera follows the Principal Dress, across playtime, soup for lunch, Headmistress inspection, culminating in an ecstatic scene of rupture, rapture and liberating transformation. A girl is born.

2026 #31 Discipline (short)
2025 The Testament of Ann Lee
2020 The World to Come
2014 The Sleepwalker

“I wanted to tell a story that was connected to one of the pieces from the collection. And I had this really beautiful dress for my press conference, and because I wore it in an environment where I felt really nervous and anxious, putting that garment on was a little bit of armor for me. [...] Clothing is never neutral. It is costume, control, ritual. [...] Once I became a director, I realized that, to me, the archetype more correct for the job of a director is the multitasking mother.”
(Mona Fastvold)

Mona Fastvold is a Norwegian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actress known for her ambitious character-driven narratives. Her most recent film, The Testament of Ann Lee is a wide-ranging historical musical that stars Amanda Seyfried in the role of the founder of the Shakers religious movement in the 18th century. Seyfried was nominated for a Golden Globe for this role. Previously, Fastvold had made her directorial debut in 2014, with The Sleepwalker. Six years later, she directed The World to Come (2020), winner of the Queer Lion, starring Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby. Fastvold frequently works with her partner, Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote the films The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux, and The Brutalist; for this last, she received an Academy Award nomination.