Discipline
A film by Mona Fastvold

A stately boarding school in Northern Italy. Sunrise and mist. The building seems uninhabited, shuttered and cold. We see two figures awake in the same bed: one is a life-sized doll, the other its all-white masked puppeteer. Others - exactly the same kind of pairing - start their day in the dormitory by putting on clothes. This is daily routine, this requires discipline. The camera follows the Principal Dress, across playtime, soup for lunch, Headmistress inspection, culminating in an ecstatic scene of rupture, rapture and liberating transformation. A girl is born.

“Discipline”, directed by the Norwegian filmmaker, Mona Fastvold, is the 31st commission from Miu Miu Women’s Tales. The acclaimed short-film series invites today’s most profound and original female directors to investigate vanity and femininity in the 21st century.

About the beginnings of “Discipline”, Mona explains, “I wanted to tell a story that was connected to one of the pieces from the collection. And I had this really beautiful dress for my press conference, and because I wore it in an environment where I felt really nervous and anxious, putting that garment on was a little bit of armor for me.” In the film, she decided to work with puppets as a way to navigate the separation of a woman in her private world versus the way she presents herself to the world in public. The puppets provide an extension of the self. She wanted to bring in choreographer Celia Rowlson Hall, who has experience telling woman-centric stories, and is also one of Mona’s oldest friends and professional collaborators (who has also previously directed MMWT #14) to help experiment and create something free and creative with the puppets.

The film examines girlhood as inherited performance-costumes worn before identity forms. Featuring pieces from the Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Mona frames femininity as simultaneous nurture and constraint, exploring how intimacy between girls and garments becomes predetermined theatre. Clothing functions as ritual and control, dictating movement before self-knowledge arrives. As Mona says, “Clothing is never neutral. It is costume, control, ritual.”

Celebration of the feminine coexists with ornamental limits. Bodies learning choreography they never consented to rehearse, following invisible rules embedded in fabric and gesture. It echoes her approach to filmmaking, which she contrasts with the stereotype of the heroic male director: “Once I became a director, I realised, to me, the archetype more correct for the job of a director is the multitasking mother.”

She goes on to express that, “you may not yet know who you are, but you know how you are meant to move.” Women follow choreography, they perform roles, until something inside resists - “In that smallest shift lies freedom.” With an abstract musical score by Daniel Blumberg, “Discipline” meditates on form and feminine defiance expressed through felt experience rather than anger, locating freedom in the smallest gesture of refusal - the ongoing struggle of becoming while the world watches, waiting to see which costume fits.

As Mona precisely frames it, her new Women’s Tales presents “a girl stepping forward into the world, visible at last, still unfinished.”

Mona Fastvold is an Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker and actress known for ambitious, character-driven storytelling. Her latest film, “The Testament of Ann Lee”, is an expansive historical musical starring Amanda Seyfried as the founder of the Shaker religious movement in the 18th century. Featuring original songs by her Academy Award®-winning “The Brutalist” collaborator Daniel Blumberg, inspired by Shaker hymns, the film evokes the movement’s ecstatic worship style. Seyfried received a Golden Globe nomination, with Variety calling the film “Blazingly Ambitious”. Fastvold previously directed the Queer Lion-winning “The World to Come” (2020), starring Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby. She also frequently collaborates with her partner Brady Corbet, co-writing “The Childhood of a Leader”, “Vox Lux”, and “The Brutalist”, earning an Academy Award® nomination for the latter.

Mona Fastvold’s new episode for Women’s Tales will be premiered at Village East by Angelika in New York on February 12th, 2026. The short will subsequently be on Miu Miu digital channels. “Discipline” will also be available for global streaming on MUBI from March 13, 2026.