Rocket Girl
Director: Agnes Swiercz
Sweden, United States, 2025, 71 min
Shooting Format:4K
Festival Year:2026
Category:Documentary Feature
Crew:Writers: Agnes Swiercz, Jesse Damiani. Producers: Agnes Swiercz, Zada Clarke. Cinematography : Marcin Kapron; Editing : Iza Pająk; Sound and Sound Design : Marcin Lenarczyk; Music : Alva Noto, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Thomas Knak
Email:therocketgirlfestivals@gmail.com
Synopsis
Rocket Girl is an intimate portrait of a young girl, Eleni, as she navigates adolescence while pursuing her passion of building rockets. The film weaves together an honest depiction of the awkward and timeless coming of age story, with a peek into the competitive, male dominated and intense community of Rocketry. It’s the story of a girl who marches to the beat of her own drum, against the grain of societies expectations about what she should be or do—a girl who believes that even the sky isn’t the limit.
About the director
Agnieszka Swiercz is a Polish- American filmmaker and an artist, based in New York City and Stockholm. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, where she specialized in Film, TV, and Photography. Additionally, she holds a degree in Art History from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and completed her studies at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. With extensive experience as a director, she has contributed to various feature films and TV productions for major European networks, including TVN, Polish National Television, and Polsat. Her recent documentary, co-written with a focus on impactful storytelling, "At the Edge of Russia," has garnered multiple awards at international festivals, including the Magic Hour Award at the +Doc Film Festival, the Silver Eye Award at Jihlava, and the Golden Pram Award at the Zagreb Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Documentary by the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking in New York. In addition to her work as a documentary filmmaker her fine art has been shown in many solo and collective art shows internationally.
Filmmaker's note
Eleni is a young girl who refuses to be confined by society’s expectations, pursuing her passions with a fearlessness that makes even the sky feel like just the beginning. She believes in possibility, and in doing so, she embodies the courage, curiosity, and determination that so often define the moments when a life begins to take shape.
This film is deeply personal to me. Eleni’s story mirrors my own teenage years and the powerful curiosity I once had for technology. I grew up on the German–Polish–Czech border in the 1990s and attended a technical high school specializing in electronics and coding. I was the only girl in my class, surrounded by boys — much like Eleni in the field of rocketry. I was driven and passionate, yet constantly reminded that a girl could “never be as good as a boy” in STEM.
Unlike Eleni, I eventually turned away from that path and redirected my energy toward the arts. Since then, my work has consistently explored questions of gender equality and representation. Years later, after the birth of my daughter while I was living in New York City, I experienced postpartum depression and lost the sense of drive that had once defined me. In search of that energy again, I set out to make a film about a teenage girl who embodies the determination I once felt.
When I met Eleni, I was immediately drawn to her fearless spirit, her perseverance, and her ability to stay true to herself during a time in life that can be deeply confusing. What moved me most was her generosity toward others. Eleni represents a form of female strength rooted not only in ambition, but in solidarity and care for her community. In a world that urgently needs new role models, she embodies the kind of energy, courage, and sisterhood that can inspire the next generation.
Rocket Girl also doubles as a portrait of America. Eleni’s multicultural heritage, her family’s financial reality, and the political climate shaping the country today reflect what it means to grow up middle-class in the United States at this moment in time.
Through an intimate observational approach, the film follows Eleni during a pivotal moment in her life, capturing the fragile space where ambition, identity, and the realities of growing up begin to intersect. At its heart, however, this is a coming-of-age story — a girl navigating her way into adulthood.
I am drawn to that magical moment when a dream is born and begins to take shape — when a girl believes that even the sky isn’t the limit, and sets out to prove it.