In a new short film for Miu Miu, director Mona Fastvold uses puppets to paint a surreal portrait of girlhood

With ‘Discipline’, part of Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the celebrated filmmaker explores ‘the idea of a split self – the private interior versus the version we present to the world'

By Anna Fixsen

published 17 February 2026

in News

Miu Miu Womens tales Mona Fastvold — (Image credit: Courtesy Miu Miu)

Mona Fastvold has been busy. Last March, her film The Brutalist, which she co-wrote and produced, swept up three Academy Awards. Just six months later, she premiered The Testament of Ann Lee, a drama about the life of the founder of the Shaker movement, at the Venice International Film Festival to critical acclaim.

It was during her time in Venice that Fastvold began to think about clothing and the meaning it can carry – particularly, the striped Miu Miu shirtdress she wore to a press conference promoting her film. ‘It was this really intense moment – it’s the first time you’re presenting your thoughts to the world,’ Fastfold recalled. ‘I have a lot of feelings about this garment.’

What resulted was a new short film, Discipline, an intimate and surreal portrait centred around girlhood, and how we present ourselves to others. The film debuted on 12 February in Manhattan at the Village East by Angelika cinema to coincide with New York Fashion Week and is the latest instalment of Miu Miu’s ongoing series, Women’s Tales, an initiative that aims to support and promote the work of female directors. Since debuting in 2011, Miu Miu has debuted 31 short films, including projects by Dakota Fanning, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Agnès Varda and Miranda July, among others.

For Fastvold, the opportunity to work with Miu Miu was a creative boon, despite her packed schedule: ‘It felt like this wonderful gift to have a moment to just really be playful and explore some ideas, it’s something you rarely get to do,’ she said. Naturally, she tapped past and present collaborators, including The Testament of Anne Lee star Amanda Seyfried and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, to join her.

Discipline unfolds in a stately country home (the exteriors were shot in northern Italy, while the interiors are set in a Gilded Age manor in Upstate New York), a setting that evokes a boarding school. Viewers are first greeted with a tranquil morning scene, the sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves filling the air. Inside the grand, historic interiors, the camera settles on a dormitory, showing sleeping figures covered in sheets.

Rather than humans, however, you realize that the dreamers are featureless puppets, paired with masked human dancers. Quietly, these puppets, their limbs controlled and manipulated by their cloaked counterparts, awaken, pull up stockings, put on dresses (the same, in fact, that Fastvold wore during her press conference) and go through the motions of their morning school routine. They play outside, read books, eat breakfast, and attend lessons, all under the supervision of masked nuns.

‘[As a young girl], you’re constantly trying on new identities. You're trying on new dresses,’ Fastvold explained. ‘There's a separation between the core of you, who you present in the world. And I thought, wouldn't it be exciting if you played with that? There’s a puppet, the puppeteer, and then you play with that relationship in the physical space.’

Half of the film's 13-minute run time is consumed by a surreal dance lesson, where the masked actors and their inanimate puppets, strapped to their bodies, undertake an intricate, choreographed ball. One mannequin, it becomes clear, is not like all the rest — rebelling against the strict choreography by dancing joyfully by herself. One by one, the dancers collapse slowly into a pile. A human figure, depicted by Seyfried, emerges from the mound of still bodies – her pink floral frock the sole object of colour in the scene. She exits the country house, the breeze to her face and her hair flowing behind her, and is free.

The film, at intervals, is unsettling, humorous and joyful as the actors manipulate the life-size puppets. ‘I became interested in the idea of a split self - the private interior versus the version we present to the world,’ Fastvold said. ‘The dolls emerged as a way to externalise that division. They allowed me to explore how bodies are taught, trained and rehearsed before identity fully arrives.’

‘With Miu Miu and the Women’s Tales framework, I was able to work intuitively and abstractly,' she continued. 'The format allowed me to create something quite playful, to explore something new with my film family. It was great.’

Watch the full film below.

Discipline by Mona Fastvold – Miu Miu Women’s Tales #31 - YouTube

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Anna Fixsen is a Brooklyn-based editor and journalist with 13 years of experience reporting on architecture, design, and the way we live. Before joining the Wallpaper* team as the US Editor, she was the Deputy Digital Editor of ELLE DECOR, where she oversaw all aspects of the magazine’s digital footprint.