‘I love the folktales that I grew up with in Malaysia,’ says writer-director Amanda Nell Eu. ‘When I was a kid, my parents would tell me stories of monsters in the jungle.’ While Eu honed her craft in England, studying at the London Film School, when she returned to Malaysia, she channelled these memories into her debut feature, Tiger Stripes. ‘I used to fear these characters,’ she adds. ‘Now coming back as a woman, I was like “I think I relate to these characters a lot more than everyone else”.’

A beguiling mix of folklore and female coming-of-age, indebted to filmmakers David Cronenberg and Apichatpong Weerasethakul among others, Tiger Stripes tells of Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal), a rebellious 12-year-old schoolgirl. The first in her class to get her period, as she becomes ostracised by her peers she undergoes a metamorphosis, developing unusual animalistic characteristics in a plot development that compares to Ginger Snaps, the Canadian puberty-werewolf movie from 2000.

‘I’d see young girls be so free with their movement, with their bodies, having fun and playing; like boys do,’ recalls Eu. ‘And then the minute they hit puberty . . . I feel like everything changes. Their body language changes, and they start moving in a very different way, almost restricted. And I wanted to show that change in Zaffan when she went through puberty and how she learned about shame and about insecurities.’

Eu’s film doesn’t just deal with adolescent growing pains, but issues ranging from fear of the other to the pervasive nature of social media. Even the exorcist brought in to confront Zaffan’s ‘demon’ tells his onlookers to ‘tag’ him in any videos they upload. ‘I just love using genre to talk about things that are very serious and very personal to me,’ adds Eu, a director who on this evidence has earned her stripes.

Tiger Stripes is in cinemas from Friday 17 May.