I met over a hundred preteens who told me their stories. I asked them how they felt about their femininity in today's society. I wanted to know how they dealt with their self-image at a time when social media is so important, and they have access to so much information and so many images.

Maimouna Doucoure

I want to say to this guy and everyone who thinks that femininity means you don't have the power to think, to write, lead and create, women are capable of doing everything.

Maimouna Doucoure

For me, what counts the most is my film. I can express myself and therefore take care of myself through my art. Cinema not only heals me, but it can change the world.

Maimouna Doucoure

When young girls can get 400,000 likes by doing a sexy selfie... we have to offer them another way of being. To dream of being female astronauts, engineers or presidents.

Maimouna Doucoure

Streamers are a great way to get my stories out and share my messages with more people.

Maimouna Doucoure

We're used to saying that women in other cultures are oppressed, but the question that I had when making the film was: Isn't the objectification of a woman's body that we often see in Western culture another kind of oppression?

Maimouna Doucoure

Cuties' is universal, and it raises concerns that involve all world societies.

Maimouna Doucoure

I think where policy fails cinema can help to bring people together.

Maimouna Doucoure

When I was 10 and 11, my dream was to be a boy. I saw that there were so many injustices that women had to live with around me. I didn't want to have that; I wanted to have the freedom that little boys had.

Maimouna Doucoure

It's important to be vigilant at all stages of the making of a film. The theme of a work should be represented properly.

Maimouna Doucoure

We need cinema to know each other and love each other.

Maimouna Doucoure

My father is a street sweeper, my mother works in a shop.

Maimouna Doucoure

I'm a French director, but what's important for me is that my stories have a universal message, whatever language they're filmed in.

Maimouna Doucoure

We ask these young girls to grow up too fast. In the society where they grow up, they are asked to grow up too fast, and everything pushes them in that direction. The media creates pressure.

Maimouna Doucoure

When I was young, I also saw a lot of injustices around me lived by women.

Maimouna Doucoure

I met over a hundred preteens who told me their stories. I asked them how they felt about their femininity in today's society. I wanted to know how they dealt with their self-image at a time when social media is so important, and they have access to so much information and so many images.

Maimouna Doucoure

Today you have that exposition of your body on social media and you also have this big competition of finding 'likes' and followers and that is for me a new kind of finding love.

Maimouna Doucoure

We, as adults, have not given children the tools to grow up healthy in our society.

Maimouna Doucoure

Television is a sort of mirror of society, but for me, I never saw my reflection in it. Which makes it quite difficult afterwards to open up all the imaginative possibilities.

Maimouna Doucoure

What happens is young girls see images of women being objectified, and the more the woman becomes an object the more followers and likes she has - they see that as a role model and try to imitate these women, but they're not old enough to know what they're doing.

Maimouna Doucoure

Puberty is such a confusing time. You are still a child, with all that wonderful naivete and innocence, but your body is changing, and you're self-conscious and curious about its impact on others all at the same time.

Maimouna Doucoure