“I said no.”

Three simple words shatter the teenage joy that is the bedrock of Mexico City-based filmmaker Fernanda Tovar’s astonishingly assured debut feature, which won the Crystal Bear for Best Film in Berlinale’s Generation 14+ strand.

We never see the assault. It happens behind a bathroom door at a party packed with tipsy teenagers and no parents in sight. But the confusion, closely followed by distress and then anger, lingers, driving a wedge between 16-year-old besties Paula (a revelatory Darana Álvarez) and La Maestra (an equally impressive Rocio Guzmán).

Relying on ChatGPT to educate them on what happens next, their training for the Junior Pan American Swimming Championships is derailed, with precious few places to spare. They must figure out how to put the pieces of their still so fragile lives back together in one of the most delicately drawn, but devastatingly necessary films you’ll see all year.