First Girl I Love
A high-school love triangle develops when seventeen-year-old Anne fell in love with the most popular girl at her school and her best friend Clifton, who has always harbored a secret crush, does his best to get in the way.
14 August 1996, College Station, Texas, USA
17 October 1981, Chicago, Illinois, USA
7 May 1994, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
31 October 1995, USA
October 27, 2016
The plot isn't really the film's focus. Sanga paints his characters with such sensitivity and compassion that even when they're making the wrong choices, perhaps even because they're making the wrong choices, our heart goes out to them.October 18, 2016
A woozy and wonderful queer teen romance.January 27, 2016
A naturalistic coming-out story sinks into extreme melodrama.May 05, 2016
Usually I'm not on board with films that withhold information and flash back to it later -- often it's just lazy storytelling -- but here, it works, resulting in something impressionist and simple at the same time.April 17, 2017
Kerem Sanga's teen romantic drama, First Girl I Loved is a beautiful portrayal of the joys but especially the fears that come with love when it takes an unconventional form.October 22, 2016
A sophisticated and complex teenage coming of age story.October 06, 2016
Sanga creatively employs a swirl of text messages, voice-overs, baseball signals and other linguistic modes to beautifully illustrate the jumble of thoughts cascading through young minds.November 21, 2016
Director Kerem Sanga's gift for quantum observation is one thing, but it's the performances that make this Sundance audience favourite really sing.February 23, 2016
For a film that tackles such weighty subjects as consent & homophobia, First Girl I Loved never gets bogged down in melodrama. It's a kind film - heartfelt and empathetic - a memory more than earned.January 28, 2016
This watchable but middling drama tackles a worthy, relatable subject without quite figuring out what to say about it.May 05, 2016
Coming-of-age films set among the high school set often feel like a dime-a-dozen, but here's one that will leave audiences feeling like a million bucks.May 05, 2016
The rest of the piece sometimes gets away from its writer/director but when it focuses on its pair of committed actresses, it's believable, confident and even moving.