Rocket Girl
Agnes Swiercz / United States, Sweden / 2025 / 71 min
Rocket Girl is a feature documentary paints an intimate portrait of a teenage girl, Eleni, as she navigates adolescence while pursuing her passion of building rockets. We follow her journey over the course of a year, as she combats social and cultural pressures to turn her away from her scientific pursuits and focus on regular "teenage" interests. As we watch Eleni grow up, her Chinese American heritage, financial and social status, and the ever-changing political landscape in America, shed light on what it means to be a young person in the current world. Ultimately, this is a story of a girl who marches to the beat of her own drum, against the grain of society's expectations about what she should be or do. Through the film, we explore the magical moment when a big dream is born and nurtured, when a girl believes that even the sky isn’t the limit – and sets out to prove just that.
About the film
Rocket Girl is a feature documentary paints an intimate portrait of a teenage girl, Eleni, as she navigates adolescence while pursuing her passion of building rockets. We follow her journey over the course of a year, as she combats social and cultural pressures to turn her away from her scientific pursuits and focus on regular "teenage" interests. As we watch Eleni grow up, her Chinese American heritage, financial and social status, and the ever-changing political landscape in America, shed light on what it means to be a young person in the current world. Ultimately, this is a story of a girl who marches to the beat of her own drum, against the grain of society's expectations about what she should be or do. Through the film, we explore the magical moment when a big dream is born and nurtured, when a girl believes that even the sky isn’t the limit – and sets out to prove just that.
