Junior is nine years old and has „bad hair.” He wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, like a fashionable pop singer. This puts him at odds with his mother Marta. The more Junior tries to look sharp and make his mother love him, the more she rejects him, until he is cornered, face to face with a painful decision. Bad Hair is the intimate story of a nine-year old child’s initiation to life and his difficult journey marked by intolerance.
„The slippery nature of identity – how it forms in us, the ways it tells us how we might want to look or who we desire – is at the heart of this third feature from Venezuelan writer-director Marina Rondón. At times harsh but often tender, Bad Hair exudes compassion for all involved, even Marta, whose concerns may be grounded in homophobic panic but whose desperation is almost palpable. This is a story of people doing what they feel they have to, partly out of fear, but also out of love.”
Diana Sanchez, London FF