In The Name of The Mother: Maura Delpero’s ‘Maternal’ —Locarno
What is motherhood? Maura Delpero’s Maternal (Hogar, 2019) shows a world in which two paradigms of maternity – the single…
The Persistence of Fairy Tales: Choice and Desire in Sophie Hyde’s ‘Animals’
Andrea Dworkin calls fairy tales, “the first scenarios of women and men which mold our psyches”, teaching fundamental cultural lessons…
Portrait of Isabella Eklöf
“I’ve always had beef with the kind of film where danger lurks in the shadows because I find that very…
The Woman Everyone Knows: In Conversation With Aminatou Echard
In her most recent film, French filmmaker Aminatou Echard takes up the eponymous heroine of Jamilia, the 1958 novel by…
On Looking but not Seeing: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ‘Never Look Away’
The title of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away (2018) is an imperative: don’t look away from art, evil,…
The (Not So) Queer Failure of Chanya Button’s ‘Vita and Virginia’
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West met at a party.i According to historical records this was a dinner party, but in…
The Visible Woman: In Conversation with Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger is a British-born multimedia artist, whose dynamic body of work weaves together elements of eroticism, feminism, spirituality and…
Fragments of Lucrecia Martel’s ‘The Headless Woman’ (‘La mujer sin cabeza’, 2008)
1. In Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza, 2008), the protagonist bears her guilt so singularly you…
A Different Kind of Duration: Lila Avilés’s ‘The Chambermaid’
The Hotel, Room 47: an open suitcase; mussed bedsheets; a torn postcard of Venetian sights, its eight pieces carefully re-assembled….
The Making of a Millennial Woman
Being a millennial feels like being stuck in a permanent state of on-the-cusp adolescence. Sulky, prickly, and painfully hyper-visible, our…
Aude Léa Rapin’s ‘Les héros ne meurent jamais’ (‘Heroes don’t die’) takes on the ethics of the documentary film – Cannes
Aude Léa Rapin’s Les héros ne meurent jamais (Heroes don’t die) begins with Joachim (Jonathan Couzinié), a thin, bearded young…
No other voice: Claire Denis’s ‘High Life’
Claire Denis’s latest film, High Life, opens with an exchange of voices: the cry of a baby, Willow, and the…
Rebecca Zlotowski’s ‘Une fille facile’ (‘An Easy Girl’) takes on the cliché of the woman of leisure – Cannes
Rebecca Zlotowski’s Une fille facile (An Easy Girl) opens with a contradiction. A quotation from 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise…
Chaining Female Reproduction to Analogy: Kantemir Balagov’s ‘Beanpole’
“What would happen to a woman after the war, when there is a tectonic shift in her mind, her nature?”1…
Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé Mévellec’s ‘The Swallows of Kabul’ (‘Les Hirondelles de Kaboul’) Takes a Rosy Look at Female Sacrifice – Cannes
In their adaption of Yasmina Kadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul (2002), director/actress Zabou Breitman and animator Eléa Gobbé Mévellec…
On Well-Meaning White Women: Josephine Decker’s ‘Madeline’s Madeline’
“What you are experiencing is just a metaphor,” a nurse hovering above the camera says in the opening scene of…
Monia Chokri’s ‘La femme de mon frère’ (‘A Brother’s Love’) ventures beyond the hellscape of the self – Cannes
La femme de mon frère opens to a combative discussion between four philosophy professors about whether they should pass a…
Pushing at the Wound: Sex in Lola Clavo’s ‘No Love Lost’ and Maria Llopis’s ‘El Belga’
A few years after I first saw it, I wrote a character in my novel Vitrinerie who described Lola…
Watching Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ with my teenage sister
“It’s like I’m waiting in line for like a rollercoaster,” says 14-year-old Kayla to the very small, potentially even non-existent…
De-fetishising the Commodity: Xiaolu Guo’s ‘Five Men and a Caravaggio’
Five Men and a Caravaggio is true to its title: a story of five men, each from different artistic professions,…
On Solitary Companionship: ‘A Wild Stream’ (‘Una corriente salvaje’) by Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda at Cinéma du Réel
Nuria Ibánez Castañeda’s Una corriente salvaje (A Wild Stream, 2018) opens on Omar, wading waist-deep off a remote beach in…