We Are the Best! is about Swedish thirteen-year-old girls in 1986 – and the most important descriptor here is “thirteen-year-old”. It’s perhaps the age where friendship is most important. It’s the age when the needle flips back and forth between moroseness and exuberance. When you feel like your peers despise you, when you’re skittish about your own body, you’re exploring feelings about the opposite gender and you are certain that your parents are the most embarrassing on the planet – you really need someone on your own team to check in with.
In We Are the Best!, we have two girls with punk hair who are NOT the popular kids in school. Trying to stake out some personal dignity, they find themselves claiming to be a punk band, despite not owning or knowing how to play any musical instruments. They reach out to the other social outcast at their school, a serious practicing Christian who plays classical guitar, and she soon sports a punk haircut, too. Together, they test the bonds of friendship and navigate the adventures that all thirteen-year-olds encounter. As it explores the value of teen friendship, We are the Best! is funny, poignant and charming.