Don’t let the title fool you–this is not a light film. Mall Girls, a Polish export, is a serious movie about coming-of-age, sex, consumerism and cliques. It’s the story of a 14-year-old girl, Ala, who is trying to fit in with a group of cool girls at her new school. The girls spend most of their time cruising the mall, hence the film’s title, but what they’re really doing there is pretty disturbing.

When the girls want a new electronic gadget or a cool new pair of jeans, they find a guy at the mall and proposition him, offering a blowjob, for example, if he buys them something nice. They march around in micro-minis and thigh-high boots and basically treat sex like currency. This is a world where your virginity can be sold for a new Motorola cell.

Mall Girls is a dark vision of coming-in-age in post-Communist Poland, where girls value things you can buy in a mall more than their own bodies. It’s also a fabulous portrayal of the strange culture of female cliques and the power of peer pressure. The film is an amazing directorial debut by Katarzyna Roslaniec, who studied economics before becoming a filmmaker, which makes a lot of sense in the context of Mall Girls. See it–but prepare to feel angry and sad, because this stuff really happens.