Director: Hafsia Herzi

Cast: Nadia Melliti, Park Ji-min, Amina Ben Mohamed, Rita Benmannana, Melissa Guers

The Little Sister is a 2025 French-German drama directed by Hafsia Herzi, following a seventeen-year-old French-Algerian girl as she navigates the competing demands of family tradition, faith, and personal identity during her first year at a prestigious Paris preparatory school.

What is The Little Sister about?

Fatima is the youngest daughter in a tight-knit French-Algerian family living on the outskirts of Paris. Academically gifted, she earns a coveted spot in an elite prep programme — a threshold that opens a world far removed from the suburb where she grew up. At school she thrives, yet at home the expectations remain unchanged. Football keeps her grounded, and a secret relationship gives her something to hold onto. But the deepest secret Fatima carries is the one she cannot yet bring herself to speak aloud: an attraction to women that puts her at odds with everything her family believes. Between the Paris she is discovering and the home she has always known, Fatima must work out who she truly is — without losing either world.

Cast & crew

The film marks a significant directorial turn for Hafsia Herzi, a French actress of Algerian descent long recognized for her on-screen work. As Fatima, Nadia Melliti delivers a restrained and fully inhabited performance. Park Ji-min, Amina Ben Mohamed, Rita Benmannana, Melissa Guers, Razzak Ridha, Louis Memmi, and Anouar Kardellas round out an ensemble that grounds the story in lived specificity.

Context & significance

For Persian-speaking diaspora viewers, The Little Sister will feel quietly familiar: the pull between a traditional household and the liberties of European city life is a tension many Iranian families abroad have lived from both sides. The film speaks to the children of immigrants who hold two cultures simultaneously — fluent in the language of both and fully at home in neither. Herzi's approach is observational rather than polemical, letting contradictions breathe rather than resolving them neatly. The film is available in its original French audio with no Persian dubbing or subtitles, so viewers comfortable with French or English subtitles will get the most out of it.

Where & how to watch

The Little Sister is available on K-Time. Stream it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Subscription can be cancelled anytime. Audio is original French; no Persian dubbing or Persian subtitles are currently available.