I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story

Elif, Sadia, Dara, and Susan are four women from three generations, who have one single thing in common: they each love a boyband. While 16-year-old Turkish-American Elif longs for the boys of One Direction, 56-year-old Susan reminisces about her days spent shouting herself voiceless in ecstasy over the biggest boyband of all time, The Beatles.

For these four women, their relationships with the groups in question and their music have been nothing short of life defining. This film offers some insight into how and why that can happen. What causes millions of young girls to lose sleep over a few singing and dancing boys that they will likely never meet? And why do some of them nurture that love for several decades after the fact? The film is an okay introduction to pop history, but make no mistake, this is first of all a film made for the fans.

I Used to be Normal is personal and universal at the same time: Most people will be able to relate to the descriptions of the first celebrity crush, or get embarrassed as the women tell us all about their walls tapestried with posters and magazine clippings. The intergenerational quartet relay their anecdotes with a sense of humour and self irony, and this makes for a warm and genuinely funny cinema experience about music, love, growing up – and boybands.