Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story

The true story of how an album made by four tween girls became an accidental alt-music sensation.

In the first summer of the new millennium, with girl pop dominating the charts, 11-year-old Ayden moved to Santa Rosa, California, and met her new best friends: Jessica, Janet and Janet’s nine-year-old sister Mary. In between millennial tween pursuits like devising dance routines and holding sleepover seances, the four girls started a band. Calling themselves X-Cetra, they recorded eight songs with the help of Janet and Mary’s musician mum, Robin. But the final album was a disappointment, sounding more like a creepy, haunted version of Pure Moods than the slick pop they’d imagined. When summer ended, so did X-Cetra.

Their accidentally avant-garde album made its way onto the internet, however, where it developed a life of its own. Two decades later, having long since settled into the routines and responsibilities of work and family, the now-adult quartet were astonished to find that their childhood experiment had developed a fan base on music forums – and, inspired by the discovery, set to work rekindling their friendship and creating new music together. Winning the Grand Jury Award in SXSW’s Documentary Feature Competition, Ayden Mayeri’s autobiographical documentary doesn’t merely settle for Y2K nostalgia or outsider-music obsessions; rather, it’s an unexpectedly honest, introspective tale about four women reconnecting with fearless creativity and reckoning with their most authentic selves.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival