Born in 1959 to a middle-class family, Laurence Barraque grows up with her sister in the northern city of Rouen. She understands from an early age, by way of language and her parents' example, that a girl's place in life is inferior to a boy's. When Laurence eventually becomes a mother herself in the 90s, she grapples with the question of what it means to be a girl, to have a girl, and what lessons she should try to pass down or undo. Girl is at once intimate and sweeping in its depiction of the great challenges we face transmitting feminist values to the younger generations.