It “blows my mind” that Blue My Mind, from first-time director/writer Lisa Bruhlmann, was a thesis for film school; it has already been making a splash at major film festivals, and for good reason. (Here is where I will end the puns.) The story of Blue My Mind is a dramatic fantasy that is a metaphor for the horrors of puberty but is also a tragically beautiful one.

Bruhlmann’s debut feature follows the story of Mia (Luna Wedler), a 15-year old girl attempting to build a social life as the new girl in high school. She approaches the very obvious “cool girls” club, almost a Mean Girls-type clique with Adidas crop tops and dreads instead of pink Juicy Couture sweatsuits. After being able to endure a bit of abuse and teasing, she is welcomed into their social circle, particularly gaining the friendship of an attractive wealthy girl named Gianna (Zoe Pastelle Holthuizen), who eventually reveals her own loneliness and isolation, as well as an inferred crush on Mia.

But if that wasn’t difficult enough, Mia is beginning to experience an overwhelming transformation, calling her entire history and existence into question. Her body begins to change rapidly, and though she desperately tries to stop it, she is forced to accept the inevitable, where the power of nature of stronger than her own.

The body horror that comes with Mia’s transformation is more symbolic than anything when the truly terrifying aspect of Blue My Mind is her rapid loss of innocence that comes with the special kind of trauma of growing up female. We suffer from the idea that natural hormonal and body changes are something to be disgusted by. Sex is something to brag about for some and to be ashamed of for others. Mia won’t be accepted by the Cool Girl Club unless she has sex with men, or will be seen as a child. And yet, when she does have sex with men, she’s then shamed for her sexuality and nasty rumors begin to make their way around the school.

The portrayal of Mia’s transformation–into a young woman, let alone the aquatic creature she becomes–is so honest and hyperrealistic that we almost feel like her parents ourselves, watching in simultaneous fascination and horror as she learns the physical, mental, and social brutality that specifically affects women. And her desperation to fit in, as she smokes, drinks, and fucks her way into the social status of the cool kids, is only worsened by her gradual transformation, little by little further isolating her from her family and friends. Aquamarine, this ain’t.

Wedler is fantastic to watch and gives a sympathetic performance that is a disturbingly accurate portrayal of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world, guilty for causing her parents distress while simultaneously under extreme pressure to be on the same level of her peers. The last 20 minutes of the film is difficult to watch as we see quite possibly the lowest point of Mia’s life. In the vein of The Shape of Water, the film is designed and shot in almost entirely blue hues, as if to foreshadow her future and her “blue” state of mind (I know I said I would stop, sorry).

Bruhlmann manages to avoid all the stereotypes that come with male filmmakers’ ideas on what should be in a “strong female protagonist;” she provides a unique and realistic insight into a 15-year-old’s worldview and shows her weaknesses as much as she does her strengths, and her confusion regarding supposedly “empowering” experiences that end in failure or vulnerability. If this is only Bruhlmann’s first film, then it is only the beginning of the budding career of the next great woman in film.