synopsis

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“The Sisterhood of Night is about the loneliness and fear of growing up. These girls are trapped in suburbia, too young to drive, yet too old to be content at home. All they have is each other. The film pokes fun at the melodrama of growing up in suburban ennui, where stereotypes are made and broken in the same breath.”
--Marilyn Fu
The suburban town of Fairview, New Jersey is as ordinary as can be, inhabited by church-going all-American families whose idea of a scandal is an ill-trimmed lawn. But even the most immaculate of towns has its share of secrets, and in Fairview, it involves a group of girls who sneak out after sunset to meet in secret locations around town. One morning at church, Emily Parris, a mousy little girl with a dark secret of her own, names three of her classmates as members of a secret society called “The Sisterhood of Night,” accusing them of deviant sexual activities unimaginable to those living behind white picket fences.

The allegations throw Fairview into a craze, and the mystery only deepens when more and more girls are implicated in The Sisterhood and each of the accused refuses to explain herself. Frenzied and perturbed, the Parent-Teacher Association asks Gordy Milliken, the well-meaning, pot-smoking guidance counselor, to interview each of the girls to get to the bottom of the matter. Three of the girls are particularly suspicious: Mary Warren, the 15-year-old alleged leader of The Sisterhood, who loves The Carpenters and is covertly dating a boy behind everyone’s backs; Catherine Huang, Mary’s best friend whose weakness for Keanu Reeves is no secret; and Lavinia Hall, a child prodigy pianist who doubts she’ll ever be kissed.

Though pressure mounts and the investigation turns uncomfortably invasive, Mary, Catherine, and Lavinia continue to hold their vow of silence, even as their classmates begin to assume things of them that may or may not be true. What, then, are the girls’ deepest secrets? Why are they willing to risk so much, just for a gathering of teenaged girls? An investigative film, The Sisterhood of Night leads us through the trials and tribulations of the three girls, revealing the parental paranoia which colors the beautiful and silent anguish of girlhood.