Films on Violence Against Women

Cinema, in its most powerful form, is a mirror held up to the open wounds of society. Tackling the theme of violence against women is a complex ethical and artistic act. The collective imagination is marked by powerful works, films that have given a voice to victims and denounced the horror, becoming cornerstones of our conscience and engines for change.

But beyond the chronicle of trauma, a deeper gaze exists. It is a cinema that does not just spectacularize the darkness, but seeks to understand it. It uses cinematic language—claustrophobic tension, fragmented narratives, brutal realism—to immerse the viewer in the victim’s psychological anguish, transforming the viewing into an active act of testimony.

This guide is a journey across the entire spectrum. It is a path that unites the great masterpieces that defined the genre with the most courageous independent productions. These are works that do not offer easy catharsis, but ask necessary questions, exploring the abyssal ethical complexity of this universal theme.

The Hidden Terror: Anatomy of Domestic Violence

The home, from a refuge to a prison. These films explore the suffocating dynamics of domestic abuse, using the language of cinema to build the invisible tension and psychological bars that trap victims long before physical violence manifests.

Custody (Jusqu’à la garde)

After a contentious divorce, Miriam Besson seeks sole custody of her eleven-year-old son, Julien, to protect him from a father she accuses of being violent. Despite the child’s fears, the judge grants joint custody. Julien thus becomes a hostage in a psychological war between his parents, a fragile human shield against the escalation of his father’s threat, in a crescendo of tension that transforms the family drama into a true thriller.

Director Xavier Legrand orchestrates a work of surgical precision, which begins as an almost documentary-like drama before inexorably sliding into domestic horror. The first part of the film places us in the same position as the judge: we hear conflicting testimonies, evaluate ambiguous evidence, and are forced to decide whom to believe. This choice is not a mere narrative device to create suspense; it is a fierce critique of the inadequacy of the legal system, which struggles to decipher the codes of psychological violence, an abuse that leaves no visible bruises but deep scars.

The “rationality of the law” proves blind to the subtle dynamics of coercive control. It is precisely this institutional failure that triggers the subsequent descent into hell. When the system fails in its protective role, the private sphere turns into a battlefield. Legrand builds unbearable tension by rarely showing explicit violence, instead focusing on its constant, palpable threat: a buzzing intercom, the sound of a car stopping, a silence that is too long. The terror is not in the act, but in the anticipation.

Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos)

On a cold winter night, Pilar flees her home with her son, escaping her husband Antonio’s rage. She finds refuge with her sister, starts working, and begins to rebuild her life. But Antonio, consumed by remorse, seeks her out, promising to change, to start therapy to control his aggression. Pilar, still in love and hopeful, decides to give him another chance, re-entering a cycle of love and fear from which it seems impossible to escape.

Director Icíar Bollaín’s film is a masterful and unconventional analysis of the cycle of domestic violence: the explosion of anger, the “honeymoon” phase filled with repentance and promises, and the slow, inexorable rebuilding of tension. The film avoids portraying Antonio as a one-dimensional monster; he is a complex man, genuinely tormented by his demons and, at times, desperately wanting to change. This complexity makes Pilar’s choice even more heartbreaking, showing how love, emotional dependency, and terror can coexist in a toxic relationship.

A crucial narrative element is Pilar’s path to emancipation through art. Finding a job in a museum, she begins to rediscover the world through her own eyes, no longer through her husband’s. The title itself, “Take My Eyes,” encapsulates the essence of Antonio’s possessive control: his desire is for her to see the world as he sees it. Art becomes the tool for Pilar to reclaim her own gaze, her own interpretation of reality, and finally, her own identity. Her liberation is not just a physical escape from violence, but the reconstruction of an inner world and an autonomous self, an act of creative affirmation that allows her to save herself.

There’s Still Tomorrow (C’è ancora domani)

Delia is a wife and mother in post-World War II Rome. Her world is divided between caring for her family and a series of menial jobs to make ends meet. She is also a woman who accepts her fate, including a husband, Ivano, who considers her his property and does not hesitate to humiliate and beat her. In a patriarchal society that normalizes domestic violence, Delia seems resigned, until a mysterious letter sparks a new awareness and the courage to imagine a different future.

Paola Cortellesi, in her directorial debut, performs a brilliant cinematic operation, both using and subverting the canons of Neorealism. The black-and-white cinematography and historical setting root the story in a past of systemic female oppression. However, the film boldly breaks with pure realism through anachronistic choices, such as a modern soundtrack and, most notably, a domestic violence sequence choreographed like a grotesque and brutal dance.

These elements are not stylistic quirks but a conceptual bridge between past and present. The contemporary pop music prevents the viewer from filing the violence away as a problem of a distant era, reminding us that the patriarchal dynamics described are still tragically relevant. The dance transforms the beating from a specific event into a timeless ritual of toxic masculinity. Cortellesi uses form to assert that, although the context has changed, the choreography of abuse remains the same. The final twist, which powerfully links Delia’s personal liberation to the collective act of women voting for the first time, unites the individual struggle against domestic violence with the broader battle for civil and political rights.

Nil by Mouth

In Gary Oldman’s directorial debut, we are thrown into the life of a dysfunctional working-class family in South London. The narrative’s core is Ray, a violent alcoholic whose rage explodes into brutal abuse against his wife Val and her drug-addicted brother, Billy. The film is a raw, unfiltered portrait of an existence marked by crime, addiction, and a violence that is passed down like a curse.

Inspired by Oldman’s own childhood and dedicated “in memory of my father,” Nil by Mouth is a masterpiece of social realism in the vein of masters like Alan Clarke and John Cassavetes. The film rejects any form of sentimentality, immersing the viewer in a grueling and uncompromising reality, rendered almost documentary-like by the ferocious performances of Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke. The raw, authentic dialogue helps create an atmosphere of inescapable despair.

The heart of the film lies not just in its depiction of violence, but in its thesis on its origin. In a crucial scene, Ray reveals his own past of abuse at the hands of his father, explaining the meaning of the title: a sign above his alcoholic parent’s hospital bed. Ray’s violence is not a spontaneous act but a learned behavior, a toxic inheritance passed from one generation to the next. He is both perpetrator and victim of the same destructive masculinity he perpetuates. The film’s desolation stems from the awareness of how difficult it is to break this cycle. Val’s final decision to return to Ray is not a defeat, but the devastating confirmation of an intergenerational trap, a powerful statement on how trauma begets more trauma.

The Complicity of Silence: Systemic Abuse and Rape Culture

These films widen the frame, shifting the focus from individual violence to the social, cultural, and institutional structures that enable, ignore, and ultimately protect it. Abuse is no longer just a private act, but a symptom of a sick system.

Promising Young Woman

Cassie was a brilliant medical student, a “promising young woman.” Everything changed after her best friend, Nina, was the victim of a sexual assault that destroyed her life. Years later, Cassie lives a double life: by day, she works in a coffee shop; by night, she pretends to be drunk in bars to expose the “nice guys” who try to take advantage of her, on a personal and methodical mission of revenge.

Emerald Fennell’s film is a feminist critique as sharp as a scalpel, wrapped in a pop-colored package. The glossy, almost sugary aesthetic contrasts with its dark and angry content, a Trojan horse that delivers a ruthless analysis of rape culture. Cassie’s targets are not just the predators, but the entire ecosystem of complicity: the friends who downplayed it, the dean who protected the institution instead of the victim, the lawyer who intimidated.

The film radically subverts the rape and revenge genre. Cassie’s revenge is not initially physical, but psychological: she wants to force men to confront their true nature. The shocking and controversial ending, in which Cassie is killed, is the film’s most powerful statement. It denies the audience the catharsis of a triumphant hero to assert a more uncomfortable truth: in a deeply rooted patriarchal system, a lone woman’s direct confrontation can be fatal. Her true victory is not survival, but posthumous justice, achieved through the evidence she meticulously prepared. A bitter and powerful message: true justice requires not individual revenge, but the dismantling of the systems that protect abusers.

The Assistant

Jane is a recent graduate who has landed her dream job as an assistant at a powerful film production company. Her day is a series of humble, repetitive tasks. However, behind the monotony of the office routine, Jane begins to perceive the signs of a predatory system of abuse orchestrated by her powerful, unseen boss. Her growing awareness confronts her with a devastating moral choice in an environment where silence is the golden rule.

Inspired by the Weinstein scandal, The Assistant is a work of chilling minimalism. Director Kitty Green builds terror through the most mundane details: a stain on a couch, a lost earring, the booking of a hotel room. The abuser is never seen, transforming him from an individual into a systemic, omnipresent, and monstrous force. The violence is not an event; it is the very air breathed in that office, the culture of complicity that permeates every interaction.

The film’s pivotal scene, Jane’s meeting with the HR manager, is a perfect microcosm of institutional gaslighting. The man doesn’t deny the allegations but defuses them with subtle, lethal manipulation: he questions Jane’s motives, makes her feel ungrateful for the job opportunity, minimizes the problem, and subtly threatens her career. His final line, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You’re not his type,” is of abysmal cruelty. It admits the existence of the abuse while simultaneously normalizing it and excluding it from Jane’s sphere of responsibility, thus ensuring her silence. The film demonstrates that the most effective tool of a toxic system is not an explicit threat, but the quiet, professional process that renders a victim or witness powerless and complicit.

The Mind Under Siege: Control as a Weapon

This section focuses on a more insidious but no less devastating type of violence: the psychological. Films that explore obsession, manipulation, and mental control, showing how a woman’s mind and body can become the battlefield for the pathologies of others.

Nika

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Drama, romantic, by Leilani Amour Arenzana, United States, 2020.
Nika, a young woman from Los Angeles who lost both her parents in a car accident, has started her modeling career for some time but she feels the emptiness that surrounds her existence and the weight of time passes. She is no longer so young and she looks back on her life that she looks like a long collection of failures: she has failed to achieve success in any of the artistic fields that she had studied for. But her friend who has become a popular star doesn't seem happy either. In the throes of a severe financial crisis and in desperation Nika faces a life choice that could either redeem or ruin her: becoming an escort.

Nika shows us a plastic world, of extreme fragility and of unaware characters who seek meaning in a society that appears hostile from all points of view. The director Leilani Amour Arenzana, perhaps not always intentionally, shows us characters caught in a trap that perhaps they don't even know exists. A "Western" trap in which vices, psychological frailties, materialism seem to inexorably take over. With surrealist and dreamlike sparks, nightmares, sweet dreams and concrete problems of everyday reality, Nika is a film that tells a period of transformation and redemption of a woman, between drama and romance.

LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese

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First Love (Primo amore)

Vittorio is a goldsmith from Vicenza with an obsession for extreme thinness. When he meets Sonia, he falls in love with her, but his love is conditioned by a mad project: he wants her to lose weight until she reaches his ideal of ethereal perfection. Sonia initially accepts this request as a test of love, embarking on a path of forced weight loss that turns her into a prisoner of her partner’s pathological desire, in an escalation of psychological and physical control.

It is crucial to clarify that Matteo Garrone’s Primo amore is not a film about anorexia. It is a work about the pathology of the power relationship, a descent into the horror of psychological violence. The central metaphor is powerful: Vittorio, the goldsmith, treats Sonia’s body like raw gold. He wants to “purify” it of dross, of flesh, to reduce it to its essence, to the skeleton, to his abstract and inhuman ideal. Sonia’s body becomes the territory of his conquest, an object to be molded and, ultimately, annihilated.

Garrone’s direction is essential to conveying the horror of the situation. The cold, desaturated photography, the claustrophobic interiors, and the jarring soundtrack by Banda Osiris create a sensory experience of suffocation. The viewer is trapped along with Sonia in the methodical and silent nightmare of Vittorio’s control. The film shows how the deepest psychological abuse does not manifest with screams and explosions, but with a slow, inexorable, and silent erasure of identity. It is a chilling depiction of a form of misogyny that is not content with dominating the female body, but aspires to render it nonexistent.

Cinema as an Act of Witnessing

From the domestic prisons of Custody and Nil by Mouth, to the complicit offices of The Assistant, to the soul-crushing obsessions in First Love, cinema offers an essential and unflinching look into the darkness of gender-based violence. These works are more than just artistic achievements; they are vital cultural documents.

They function as acts of testimony, giving voice to those who have been silenced and making visible the invisible wounds of psychological and systemic abuse. By refusing easy answers and forcing the viewer to confront uncomfortable realities, these films fulfill one of cinema’s most profound functions: to cultivate empathy, provoke dialogue, and insist on the necessity of not looking away. They are a call to be witnesses, to understand, and finally, to act.