Curls (2019)

Little eight-year-old Maddie is so tortuously self-consumed with her twisted frizzy hair that she does everything in her power to hide it. On this day, she's off to YMCA camp, where she and her best friend, Adia, pretend to be mermaids in the pool. Maddie loves the water because her hair turns perfectly straight and smooth. When the kids are ordered out of the water, that's when Maddie's perfect day spirals out of control. She loses her book sock that covered her frizzy hair, her trusty spare elastics break and other tricks to hide her matted mess fail. She is confronted with her reality, that she is different. She feels ugly and inferior to everyone else. Completely exposed and nowhere to hide during a game of tag in a steamy hot gym, she does what any little girl can do, she simply breaks down and cries. No one understands her shame, no one knows why Maddie has crumbled to the floor. They believe it's because she's IT. The kids swirl around her, endlessly taunting. She believes they're making fun of her, her hair and that she's ugly. She can't hide nor make it stop. Until her nemesis, Ethan, inadvertently helps her change her perspective about how she sees herself and, in the end, Maddie realizes, if only for this moment, it's okay to let go and accept her true self.