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PRETTY BABY: BROOKE SHIELDS

By Lana WILSON

Biography - Completed 2022

A galvanizing look at actor, model, and icon Brooke Shields as she transforms from sexualized young girl to a woman discovering her power. Holding a mirror up to a society that objectifies women and girls, her story shows the perils and triumphs of gaining agency in a hostile world.

Festivals
& Awards

Sundance Film Festival 2023

Premieres

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Biography
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 138 mn
- Director(s)
- Lana WILSON
- Synopsis
- Brooke Shields, ’80s icon and household name, was a child model before she came to prominence in Louis Malle’s controversial film Pretty Baby at age 12. With a series of provocative Calvin Klein jeans ads and leading roles in 1980s teensploitation hits The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, Shields’ early career was defined by a sexuality that she could neither claim nor comprehend.
  
  In this two-part documentary, director Lana Wilson (Miss Americana, 2020 Sundance Film Festival) reveals Shields’ story through media appearances and archival footage, bringing full context to the time when Shields was coming of age in public. Wilson creates space for the adult Shields to share her intelligence, vulnerability, and humanity while reflecting on her career and life, including her complex relationship with her mother, Teri, her marriage to Andre Agassi, and her own struggles with motherhood. Honest and incisive, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields critiques a toxic culture and power structure that perpetuates misogyny and is complicit in the sexualization and objectification of young girls. But, above all, it tells the moving story of Brooke Shields discovering and embracing her own identity and agency.

PRETTY BABY: BROOKE SHIELDS

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards