In the remote Liangshan Mountains, 14-year-old Qihuo and her friends set out to find a skirt for her rite of passage.

Qihuo has a secret: she’s just had her first menstruation. This marks the arrival of the ‘Changing Skirt’ ceremony, a traditional coming-of-age ritual, which signifies she is no longer a child, but a woman bound to the communal demands of marriage and labor.

With her parents away as migrant labourers and grandfather recently passed, Qihuo and her two best friends set out on a road trip to buy a skirt for her rite of passage. Blending raw documentary with an improvised fictional voyage, the film crafts a world inhabited by the girls that exists beyond social norms. Here, as the days go by and landscapes shift, the trio traverse the rugged mountains, chase shadows and cherish fleeting moments. A time capsule, “Whispers in May” clings to the last moments of childhood, just before reality takes hold.

The film premiered at this year’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), where it also won the award for best feature.