Girls Like Girls (2026): Hayley Kiyoko's Tender Debut Finds Beauty in Grief, First Love, and the Courage to Live Authentically

 

There is something about bittersweet coming of age romances unfolding across one unforgettable summer that gets me every single time. Maybe it is because those stories understand something fundamental about growing up. A few weeks can somehow feel like an entire lifetime. A first love can permanently alter the way you see yourself. One conversation can divide your life into everything before it and everything after it. Hayley Kiyoko clearly understands that feeling. With Girls Like Girls, she transforms the story that first captivated millions through her 2015 music video, later expanded into her novel, into a warm, heartfelt, and deeply personal feature debut. It is not reinventing the coming-of-age romance, but it carries something that matters far more. Emotional honesty. You can feel every frame coming from a place of lived experience, and that sincerity gives the film a quiet power that stays with you long after the credits roll.

Set during the summer of 2006, the film follows Coley, a seventeen-year-old girl struggling to process the loss of her mother as she moves to rural Oregon to live with her estranged father. Everything around her feels unfamiliar. The town. The people. Even her own emotions. When she meets the effortlessly charismatic Sonya, an unexpected connection begins to grow between them. What starts as friendship slowly becomes something more complicated, as both girls begin confronting feelings neither fully knows how to name. That uncertainty becomes the beating heart of the film. This is not a story about pride. It is about everything that comes before pride. The confusion. The hesitation. The fear. The loneliness. The quiet realization that the person you are becoming may not be the person everyone else expected you to be. Until one day someone truly sees you, and suddenly the world feels just a little less lonely.

What impressed me most was the film's emotional honesty. Falling in love at seventeen already feels like the most overwhelming experience imaginable. Add grief, isolation, and the unexpected discovery of your sexuality, and those emotions become almost impossible to untangle. Kiyoko never simplifies that process. She understands that attraction is rarely as straightforward as saying, "I like you." There is joy tangled together with shame. Excitement sitting beside fear. Hope interrupted by self-doubt. That emotional complexity gives Girls Like Girls a maturity that elevates what could easily have become a much more conventional young adult romance.

Debutante Maya da Costa delivers a beautiful performance as Coley. There is a quiet vulnerability to her work that immediately draws you in. She conveys grief, longing, insecurity, and slowly growing confidence with remarkable subtlety. Opposite her, Myra Molloy brings equal nuance to Sonya. It would have been easy to reduce her to the familiar popular girl archetype, but Molloy consistently reveals the uncertainty hiding beneath Sonya's confidence. Together, they share the kind of chemistry that makes every glance, every pause, and every awkward silence feel meaningful. Their relationship unfolds naturally, never rushed, allowing the audience to fall in love with them right alongside each other. I also have to give Zach Braff credit for bringing warmth and sincerity to Coley's father. He is simply trying his best, and those quieter family moments add another emotional layer to the story.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. Cinematographer Sonja Tsypin captures rural Oregon with an almost nostalgic glow, filling every frame with towering trees, golden afternoon sunlight, quiet lakes, and endless summer skies. There is a softness to the photography that perfectly complements the emotional landscape of the story. It reminded me why I love films like this so much. Summer always feels like possibility. Even heartbreak somehow feels more beautiful beneath warm sunlight. Kiyoko understands how setting can become emotional memory, turning these locations into places the characters, and perhaps even the audience, will carry with them forever.

The film occasionally leans into familiar coming-of-age territory, and yes, there are moments where the dialogue feels a little awkward or the emotional beats arrive in expected ways. Under different circumstances those choices might have bothered me more. Here, they somehow fit. Real teenagers often sound awkward. First love is messy. Grief rarely follows elegant dramatic structure. More importantly, Kiyoko never loses sight of the emotional truth underneath those familiar moments. Even when the screenplay feels slightly uneven or the pacing occasionally rushes through conflicts that deserved a little more breathing room, the honesty behind every scene remains unmistakable. It is imperfect cinema in the best possible sense. Personal. Vulnerable. Earnest.

One aspect I especially appreciated was the way the film quietly captures the atmosphere of 2006 without turning nostalgia into its entire identity. The presence of instant messaging, flip phones, and that pre social media sense of adolescence never feels forced. Instead, it gently transports you back to a time when emotions felt both simpler and infinitely more confusing. Kiyoko also deserves enormous credit for taking a story she has lived with for over a decade and expanding it into something that feels cinematic rather than simply stretching out the original music video. The transition from five minutes to a feature length narrative is not an easy one, yet she manages to preserve the emotional core that made so many people connect with these characters in the first place.

There is also something inspiring about Kiyoko's journey behind the camera. During a conversation I had with her, she mentioned making this film in just 23 shooting days while also speaking honestly about the difficulties women and people of color continue to face in getting films made. As someone who hopes to bring my own stories to the screen one day, those comments stayed with me. It is genuinely disheartening that authentic voices still encounter so many barriers in an industry constantly claiming to value new perspectives. Films like Girls Like Girls are exactly why those voices matter. They expand our understanding of love, family, identity, and belonging. They remind us that every community deserves to see itself reflected on screen with compassion and authenticity.

Perhaps what moved me most is how generously the film approaches its characters. Nobody is reduced to a symbol or a lesson. They are simply young people trying to understand themselves while carrying emotional burdens that often feel far too heavy for their age. Grief sits beside romance. Family sits beside friendship. Joy exists alongside heartbreak. Like life itself, everything arrives in waves. One moment you are laughing. The next your heart quietly breaks. Then suddenly you are smiling again without even realizing it. That emotional rhythm feels deeply true.

Girls Like Girls may not be the flashiest debut of the year, but it is certainly one of the most heartfelt. Hayley Kiyoko proves herself to be a filmmaker with genuine empathy, visual confidence, and a deeply personal voice worth following. I sincerely hope she does not have to wait another decade before making her next feature.

Here is my plea. Go support women filmmakers. Go support people of color. Go support queer love. Most importantly, go support deeply human stories like this. If we truly want more films that reflect the richness and diversity of our lives, then we have to show up for them. Girls Like Girls is exactly the kind of independent film that deserves to find its audience. I have a feeling it will make a lot of young people feel seen. And honestly, there are very few compliments greater than that.