For 14-year-old Nora, the summer of 2018 is one she’ll never forget. The hottest ever recorded in Berlin’s history, it’s also the summer she breaks her finger, gets her first period in the most embarrassing way possible, colors her hair, and falls in love. With a mostly absentee mother who drinks too much, and a boy-crazy older sister who doesn’t want her around, shy Nora—expressively played by Lena Urzendowsky (Netflix’s How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast))—prefers the company of her caterpillar collection, and spends her time fantasizing about her sister’s friends. But the sweet, cocooned world inside Nora’s head will start to change when punky butch classmate Romy (an effervescent Jella Haase, Combat Girls) takes an interest.

With nuanced insight into the lives and feelings of her teenage characters, and eliciting complex performances from her young cast, writer-director Leonie Krippendorff also shows a native’s flair for revealing Berlin’s less-known corners. Shot in dreamy candy-color in the culturally diverse neighborhood around Kottbusser Tor, this delightfully bittersweet film, which premiered at this year’s Berlinale, takes us along on Nora’s journey from naïve child to older-and-wiser young adult.