New American Voices continues with an electric short film directed by a former motocross champion.

Ragamuffin follows a hearing-impaired 12-year-old dirtbike rider navigating a male-dominated landscape and her own burgeoning sexuality. Director Kaitlyn Mikayla was inspired to make the film based on episodes from her own life “as a queer girl at the motocross track, racing high-octane dirt bikes and helping [her] father run his trackside shop.”

Filmed on 16mm at real-life MX parks, Ragamuffin boasts an authentic feel that reflects the grit and danger of its central sport. Lead Ryan Myles’ performance as a nervous tween who is forced to grow up fast due to her father’s reckless behavior also feels lived-in, lending Ragamuffin an earned emotional edge.

“At its heart, Ragamuffin is a story about what it’s like to grow up as a girl in a male-dominated world and who are the women we mold ourselves after? The sport of motocross defies death and danger lurks around every corner, the same way it does when you’re 12, transitioning into adulthood and leaving the safety of what it means to be a ‘child’ behind.” KAITLYN MIKAYLA

According to Mikayla, her “father would inevitably take all of his newborns for a cruise around the yard on a Honda dirt bike.” This lifelong immersion in motocross culture fueled a decade or so of her life, but it also influenced which outfits and props Mikayla ended up including in Ragamuffin. She wanted the film “to look and feel like a time capsule.” Indeed, the bold colors and vintage looks on display evoke a past era of MX biking, but it also places the film in a world of its own, one that Mikyala has described as “nostalgic and timeless, just like our story.”

Kaitlyn Mikayla is a writer, director, and photographer. Her directorial debut, Ragamuffin, premiered at Sundance 2024 and was an Oscar-Qualifier for the 98th Academy Awards. Her follow-up, Stockholm, is an erotic thriller about consent. Both films demonstrate her affinity for subversive storytelling, which she hopes to expand upon with a feature based on Ragamuffin and a new script that follows a group of teenagers as a tornado is set to strike their school.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Kaitlyn Mikayla.