Teen birth rates in Arkansas are among the highest in the nation.
ABOUT THE FILM
Filmed over two years with intimate verite access, baby/girls follows Olivia, Grace and Ariana as they give birth and attempt to break the cycle of poverty, addiction, and abuse that has marked their own childhoods. With rare proximity and emotional clarity, baby/girls offers a powerful portrait of young women coming of age in a place where choice, faith, and generational traumas collide.
The stats
2x
Arkansas’ teen birth rates are nearly twice the US national average.
2%
Only 2% of teen mothers earn a college degree by age 30.
3%
Only 3% of Arkansas school districts teach highly comprehensive sex education.
50%
Only about 50% of teen mothers graduate high school by age 22.
40%
At age 5, children born to teen mothers live in households with 40% lower earnings than peers born to older mothers.
What people are saying
A raw and deeply compassionate portrait that avoids sensationalism, instead opting to humanize its subjects by focusing on their personal resilience and their desire to break generational cycles of trauma.
“baby/girls is doing important work... the tension between the political and the personal is impossible to escape... It’s a sobering journey, told with real empathy for the girls.”
These are, at their core, deeply moving stories of women made to suffer quietly across multiple generations, thanks to a cultural war that was lost long before the Dobbs decision.
“One of the more provocative titles is “baby/girls”... The documentary will almost certainly be one of the most talked-about nonfiction movies of the festival.”
