Independent films about women, made, written, or performed by women, have been fundamentally critically important in cinema as its origins. More than half of the movies produced during the era of silent films were written by female screenwriters. The expressiveness of female faces in silent cinema was essential; within them, the highest value found in every image—beauty—is expressed at the highest levels.
Women in films at the origins of cinema
One of the pioneering women in the history of cinema was Alice Guy, recognized as the first female director to create feature films. She attended screenings by the Lumière Brothers in Paris and believed that cinema held not only documentary and scientific potential but, more importantly, narrative potential. Captivated by this remarkable invention, she quickly sought opportunities in the emerging film industry.
Alice initially worked as a secretary for Gaumont camera dealers before becoming one of the most notable figures in French cinema. She began her career as a director of reproduction and later transitioned to directing films. Her first film, The Cabbage Fairy, was released in 1896, followed by many other notable works. In 1907, she moved to the United States with her husband and founded her own production company.
Watch Alice Guy Blanche
Women movies: Helene Gardner
Another important figure in the evolution of the history of cinema was Helen Gardner. She is credited with creating the prototype of the Femme Fatale, often portraying women with strong,complex characters.
Helene Gardner was not just an actress; she had a profound love for cinema. Actually, she was also a producer, set designer, costume designer, and editor of the films in which she appeared. An artist who fully expressed herself through film, she was among the pioneers dedicated to feature films during a time when they were still relatively unknown.
Mabel Normand was one of the first movie star. I play several roles in the first films of Charlie Chaplin, helping to start his success. Film of which she was also the screenwriter and director. He died at the age of 37. One of the stars of the Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated to her.
Women movies: Julia Crawford Ivers
Julia Crawford Ivers was one of Hollywood’s pioneering directors and screenwriters during the conversion of the Los Angeles area from a barren landscape into a cinematic hub. As the film industry flourished, it became synonymous with prestigious filmwriting. She also collaborated on numerous films with her son, James Van Trees, who handled the cinematography.
Women movies: Cleo Madison
Cleo Madison was one of the pioneering women who became a Hollywood star through films that showcased a distinctly feminine outlook. She was among the first actresses to take on roles that highlighted social issues, addressing discrimination against women and advocating for women’s emancipation, all while challenging the prevailing machismo of her time. In 1915, she was also hired by Global as a director for both short and feature films.
In the following years, the Hollywood movie industry evolved into a multimillion-dollar business, and the presence of women in key roles diminished substantially. the most influential positions within the industry were predominantly occupied by men. By the mid-1930s, most women were relegated to secondary roles, such as publishing and production secretaries.
Aside from their roles as actresses and screenwriters, women today occupy only a small percentage of positions in the film industry, especially in the United States and within mainstream cinema.
the executives at major production companies are predominantly men, and they tend to finance projects that reflect a male outlook of the world. As an inevitable result, only a handful of female directors have had the prospect to make their mark in the history of cinema as they truly deserve.
The List of the Best Independent Films About Women Not to Be Missed
Here is a curated selection of independent films that perfectly embody the complexity, strength, and polyphony of the female experience on screen:
Thelma & Louise
Thelma, a naive and submissive housewife, and Louise, a disillusioned and pragmatic waitress, set off for a weekend vacation to escape their routine. A traumatic event at a bar turns their brief getaway into a desperate run across America, pursued by the law but animated by a new, intoxicating sense of freedom. Their journey becomes an epic of self-determination and unbreakable friendship.
Few films have marked a cultural breaking point like Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. Thelma & Louise is more than a road movie; it is a manifesto. Its power lies in being an intrinsically reactive narrative of liberation. The entire story is an escape from something: from Thelma’s oppressive husband, from Louise’s past trauma, from a society that first ignores and then condemns them. Their freedom is not born in a vacuum but is defined in direct opposition to a patriarchal world that wants them passive and silent.
The film dismantles stereotypes piece by piece. Thelma transforms from a victim into the protagonist of her own life, discovering a strength she never knew she possessed. Louise, the more rational one, learns to let go and follow her instincts. Their female solidarity becomes the only law in a world governed by unjust male rules. The gun, a symbol of male power, is wielded by Louise not to attack, but to defend, subverting its meaning.
The iconic and controversial ending is the ultimate act of rebellion. Faced with a world that offers them no alternatives but submission or prison, Thelma and Louise choose not to turn back, not to surrender. Their flight into the void of the Grand Canyon is not a defeat, but the most radical affirmation of autonomy: the choice to define their own destiny, suspended forever in an image of absolute and indomitable freedom.
Alien
The crew of the spaceship Nostromo, awakened from hibernation to respond to a distress signal from an unknown planet, encounters a lethal alien life form. As the creature begins to eliminate them one by one, Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley emerges as the only one capable of confronting the threat, fighting for her own survival in a claustrophobic nightmare in deep space.
Ellen Ripley is not just a “strong woman”; she is a character who rewrote the rules of female representation in science fiction and action cinema. Her genesis is emblematic: the role was originally conceived for a man. This chance occurrence allowed for the creation of a protagonist defined not by her gender, but by her competence, pragmatism, and intelligence. Ripley is not there to be someone’s love interest or the damsel in distress. She is a professional doing her job.
The film deconstructs the concept of strength, often associated with muscular machismo. While her male colleagues, more impulsive or arrogant, fall victim to the horror, Ripley survives thanks to her caution, her respect for procedures, and her ability to remain calm under unimaginable pressure. Her strength is not aggressive, but resilient. It is an intellectual and emotional strength, that of someone who does not give up in the face of the unknown.
Alien also subverts gender metaphors. The film’s horror is deeply linked to a perversion of procreation and maternity, with the violence of oral penetration and chest-bursting birth. In this context, Ripley stands not as a traditional maternal figure, but as the antithesis of the Alien’s monstrous maternity. She becomes the symbol of rational survival against biological chaos, an icon of strength that needs no justification or male counterpart to exist.
Kill Bill: Volume 1
A woman, known only as “the Bride,” awakens from a four-year coma. A former member of an elite assassination squad, she was betrayed and left for dead on her wedding day by her boss and lover, Bill. Now, driven by an implacable thirst for revenge, she begins a bloody path to eliminate, one by one, all those responsible for the massacre.
If Ripley represents the strength of survival, Quentin Tarantino’s Bride embodies the strength of revenge. Kill Bill is a postmodern work that draws heavily from genre cinema, but its beating heart is one of the purest representations of female fury ever brought to the screen. Violence is not just a tool, but a language, the only one possible to express such an all-encompassing pain and betrayal.
The Bride’s transformation is a journey of reclaiming her own body and will. The coma made her a passive, violated, and helpless object. Her awakening is a brutal rebirth, an act of pure will that brings her back into the world not as a victim, but as an agent of destruction. Her strength is not only physical, evident in the breathtaking fight choreographies, but above all psychological: a monolithic determination that admits no doubt or hesitation.
The film plays with female archetypes only to shatter them. The Bride is a figure who combines the warrior and the mother (whose instinct is the primary driver of her revenge). Her fight against O-Ren Ishii, in a snow-covered garden of sublime beauty, is not just a clash between assassins, but a duel between two women who have transformed their trauma into power. The Bride’s revenge thus becomes a cathartic act, an extreme and hyper-stylized form of emancipation from pain.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
Mad Max: Fury Road
In a desolate post-apocalyptic future, the tyrant Immortan Joe enslaves the masses by controlling the water supply. When his elite imperator, Furiosa, flees with the despot’s five “wives,” she unleashes a relentless road war. Furiosa allies with Max Rockatansky, a lone prisoner, to lead the women toward salvation and freedom in a mad, adrenaline-fueled race across the desert.
Despite its title, the true beating heart of Mad Max: Fury Road is not Max, but Imperator Furiosa. George Miller’s film is a powerful feminist allegory disguised as an action movie. The narrative is an exodus, an escape from the tyranny of a toxic patriarchy embodied by Immortan Joe, a despot who considers women as property, “breeders” whose sole purpose is to give him a healthy heir. Their battle cry, written on the walls, is “We are not things.
Furiosa is an icon of strength and determination. Her very body is a map of her struggle: a mechanical arm, a shaved head, a scarred face. She is not defined by her beauty, but by her unwavering will for redemption and liberation, not just for herself but for the other women. Her strength is not a mere imitation of male models; it is rooted in a deep sense of justice and a bond of sisterhood with the fleeing wives.
The film subverts the classic role of the male hero. Max is not the savior, but a reluctant ally, a traumatized man who is dragged into Furiosa’s fight and who, in the end, recognizes her leadership. It is she who leads, plans, and fights. The final decision not to keep running but to turn back and conquer the Citadel is a revolutionary act: it is not enough to escape patriarchy, one must tear it down and build a new society on its ashes, led by women.
Arianna
Drama, by Alessandro Scippa, Italy, 2012.
On a small island where she lives and works, Arianna prepares to welcome the new year with joy, leaving the past behind. However, that night could mark not only the end of the year but also the end of her story with Nanni, a beekeeper from the city. The impending separation is a mystery to Arianna: she doesn't understand the reasons behind it, and the long conversations with the evasive Nanni seem futile in clarifying the situation, as he sees their relationship as an obstacle to his freedom. Despite her heartbreak, Arianna finds the inner strength to move forward, even in the face of the pain that this decision entails.
Arianna is a film that relies on visual storytelling, creating an evocative atmosphere inspired by mythology to explore elusive human emotions: pain, loss, abandonment, and the feeling of being uprooted. Arianna's gaze gets lost in a vast sea, an expanse with no return. The director, Scippa, captures waves, storms, lights, and shadows of nature, creating a dialogue between the human and the unexplored. The film delves into the protagonist's secret, focusing on faces and details with sincerity and poignant sensitivity. The aesthetic choice embraces the human experience and questions the boundaries and representation of cinema's immortality. The empty rooms of a mansion give the film a mythical dimension, transcending space and time, beyond imagination. Arianna is aware of her destined abandonment by Nanni Meyer, the beekeeper, and she asks for his understanding, as she comprehends his point of view. Both proud and desperate, she confesses to being strong but unable to move or rise.
LANGUAGE: Italian
SUBTITLES: English
Erin Brockovich
Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother and twice-divorced, after losing a car accident lawsuit, tenaciously convinces her lawyer to give her a job as a file clerk. While investigating a real estate case, she uncovers massive groundwater contamination by a large corporation, Pacific Gas & Electric, which is causing serious illnesses among the residents of a small town.
Erin Brockovich’s strength lies not in physical ability or heroic gestures, but in her determination, empathy, and refusal to conform. In a world, the legal one, dominated by men in suits who judge her for her provocative clothing and direct manners, Erin represents a radically different form of female power. She does not try to imitate men to be accepted; on the contrary, she uses her identity as a working-class woman, her frankness, and even her sensuality as weapons.
The film is a fierce critique of classism and sexism. Erin is constantly underestimated, dismissed as incompetent or vulgar. But it is precisely her distance from that elitist world that allows her to connect with the victims, ordinary people who trust her because they recognize her as one of them. Her strength is her humanity, her ability to listen and to transform stories of individual suffering into a collective battle for justice.
Erin Brockovich redefines the concept of intelligence. She does not have a law degree, but she has an emotional and practical intelligence that proves to be much more effective. She is a woman who does not ask for permission, who breaks down barriers with her stubbornness, and who demonstrates that true strength does not come from titles or positions, but from the will to fight for what is right, without ever betraying one’s own nature.
Suffragette
In early 20th-century London, Maud Watts is a young laundress, wife, and mother whose life is turned upside down when she becomes involved, almost by chance, in the nascent and increasingly radical suffragette movement. Initially fearful, Maud transforms into a passionate militant, willing to sacrifice her job, family, and freedom for the fight for women’s right to vote.
Suffragette translates a great historical battle into an intimate and personal experience. The film avoids the trap of the hagiographic biopic by focusing not on the leaders of the movement, but on an ordinary woman, a worker whose politicization is a gradual and painful process. Maud’s strength is not innate; it is an achievement, forged in the fire of injustice and sacrifice.
The film shows the price of rebellion without flinching. For every act of defiance, there is a brutal consequence: prison, force-feeding, the loss of her job, social ostracism, and, for Maud, the greatest pain of all, the loss of her son. This narrative choice emphasizes that the struggle for rights is not an abstract concept, but a war fought on the bodies of women, who must choose between their own dignity and the roles society has imposed on them.
Sisterhood is the emotional heart of the film. It is in the bond with other women, in sharing the struggle and the pain, that Maud finds the strength to continue. The shift from peaceful protest to more radical actions is presented not as an ideological choice, but as the only possible path in the face of a deaf and violent system. War is the only language men listen to,” says one of the protagonists, summarizing the desperate need to be seen and heard, at any cost.
Hidden Figures
In the 1960s, amidst racial segregation and the space race, three brilliant African-American mathematicians work at NASA. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson are the bright minds behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The three women must contend not only with numbers but also with racial and gender barriers in an environment dominated by white men.
Hidden Figures is a crucial story of emancipation that operates on a dual track: the fight for civil rights and the struggle for gender recognition. The strength of its protagonists is primarily intellectual. In an era when women, and particularly black women, were relegated to the margins, Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary prove that genius has no color or sex.
The film powerfully stages the absurdity of discrimination. Katherine’s run to reach the only “colored” bathroom, nearly a mile from her office, becomes a physical metaphor for the systemic barriers she must overcome every day. Her intelligence is an indispensable resource for NASA, but her humanity is constantly denied by humiliating rules.
The strength of these women manifests in different ways. Katherine imposes herself with the sheer excellence of her work, becoming irreplaceable. Dorothy, seeing the arrival of computers, looks to the future and learns to program, ensuring her own professional survival and that of her colleagues. Mary fights in court for the right to study and become NASA’s first African-American female engineer. Together, they demonstrate that true strength lies in not accepting the limits imposed by others and in creating one’s own space with intelligence, courage, and solidarity.
Persepolis
Through stylized and powerful black-and-white animation, Marjane Satrapi recounts her childhood and adolescence in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. Raised in a progressive family, the young and rebellious Marji witnesses the fall of the Shah, the rise of the ayatollahs’ regime, and the war with Iraq. Sent to Europe for her safety, she confronts a new form of alienation before returning to a homeland she no longer recognizes.
Persepolis is a coming-of-age story that is both deeply political and intensely personal. Marjane’s story is that of a woman fighting for her identity and freedom in a world that constantly seeks to define and repress her. The veil, imposed by the new regime, becomes the most powerful symbol of this oppression, an attempt to erase the individuality and voice of women.
Marjane’s strength is her irreducible rebellious streak, her critical spirit nurtured by her family and her intelligence. Even as a child, she questions authority, both political and religious. Her passion for punk rock, her sneakers, and her denim jacket are not mere teenage fads, but acts of political resistance, affirmations of an identity that refuses to be homogenized.
The film also explores the complexity of exile. In Europe, Marjane is free from the regime’s oppression, but she faces prejudice, loneliness, and the difficulty of belonging to two worlds without feeling completely at home in either. Her journey is a continuous search for a place, both physical and internal, where she can be fully herself. Persepolis is a hymn to freedom of thought and the importance of never losing one’s voice, even when the whole world tries to silence it.
Carnival of souls
Horror, by Herk Harvey, United States, 1962.
Mary Henry emerges unscathed from a car accident that killed her two companions, and sets off on a strange adventure in Salt Lake City, where she finds herself drawn to a dilapidated lakeside pavilion and haunted by a ghostly figure (played by same director). A low-budget ($ 30,000) horror masterpiece that went unnoticed at the time of its release, it has become a cult film in the United States since the late 1980s. Sounds and images that have inspired directors such as George Romero and David Lynch (the masked man from "Lost Roads").
LANGUAGE: english
SUBTITLES: italian
Wadjda
Wadjda is a lively and enterprising ten-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Her greatest desire is to own a green bicycle so she can race her friend Abdullah. But in her society, bicycles are not considered suitable for girls, as they could compromise their virtue. Determined, Wadjda decides to earn the money herself by entering a Quran competition at school.
In its seemingly simple gesture, Wadjda encapsulates a revolution. The first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia by a female director, Haifaa al-Mansour, uses a young girl’s desire for a common object as a powerful metaphor for the struggle for freedom and female self-determination in one of the world’s most conservative societies.
Wadjda’s strength is her innocent and stubborn rebellion. She does not accept the “no’s” imposed on her. She wears Converse sneakers under her abaya, listens to Western music in secret, and challenges the rules of her Quranic school. The bicycle is not just a toy; it is a symbol of mobility, independence, and equality with her male friend. It is the promise of being able to go wherever she wants, by her own power.
The film offers a nuanced look at the condition of women, showing different generations navigating social restrictions in different ways. Wadjda’s mother is caught between traditions and love for her daughter, while the school principal represents repressive authority. Wadjda, with her determination, represents the hope for change, the possibility that new generations can pedal toward a different, freer, and more just future.
A Woman Under the Influence
Mabel is a loving wife and mother, but her eccentric behavior and growing emotional instability test the patience of her husband Nick, a construction worker, and create turmoil in her family. Unable to conform to the social expectations of a “good wife,” Mabel is deemed “crazy” and committed to an institution. Her return home will reveal all the cracks in a family and social system incapable of handling her uniqueness.
John Cassavetes‘ masterpiece is a raw and unfiltered immersion into the psyche of a woman who doesn’t fit in the world. Gena Rowlands‘ performance is monumental, a heartbreaking portrait of a fragility that is mistaken for madness. Mabel’s strength is not in her ability to resist, but in her desperate and authentic search for love and connection, in an environment that responds only with confusion and fear.
The film is a fierce critique of the patriarchal norms that define female “normality.” Mabel is not sick; she is simply different. Her exuberance, her gestures, her way of expressing emotions are “too much” for a world that wants women to be contained, predictable, and functional for the well-being of their husbands and children. Nick, despite loving her, is the first one who fails to understand her, trying to force her into a mold that doesn’t fit, ultimately breaking her.
A Woman Under the Influence forces us to question who defines sanity. It is a film that offers no easy or comforting answers. Cassavetes’ nervous, handheld camera, stuck to the characters, makes us witnesses to an intimate drama that is also a profound social indictment. Mabel’s struggle is that of every woman who has felt misunderstood, judged, “under the influence” of expectations she did not choose.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
For three days, we observe the meticulously ordered life of Jeanne Dielman, a middle-aged Belgian widow. Her existence is a ritual of domestic chores: she prepares meals, makes the bed, polishes her son’s shoes, with almost mechanical precision. To support herself, she receives a different client each afternoon for a sexual encounter. But slowly, small cracks begin to appear in her perfect routine, leading to an implosion as inevitable as it is shocking.
Chantal Akerman’s magnum opus is a milestone of feminist cinema, a film that changed the way time, labor, and female oppression are represented. Its power lies not in action or dialogue, but in what is unsaid and what is shown with almost unbearable patience. Akerman elevates domestic work, usually invisible and taken for granted, to a central cinematic event.
Jeanne’s routine is not just a habit; it is a defense system, a wall built to keep anxiety, trauma, and emptiness at bay. Every gesture is an attempt to maintain control over an existence that would otherwise fall apart. The film uses a radical visual grammar: fixed shots, long takes, an almost clinical distance. This style is not a whim, but a political choice. It forces us to feel the weight of time, the alienating monotony of care work, the silent violence of a life with no way out.
When the routine cracks – the potatoes are overcooked, a button is out of place – Jeanne’s entire universe collapses. The final, brutal, and sudden act is not a fit of madness, but the logical consequence of an internalized oppression that can no longer be contained. Jeanne Dielman is an all-encompassing cinematic experience, a ruthless analysis of the structural violence hidden behind the facade of bourgeois normality.
Cléo from 5 to 7
Cléo, a young and beautiful pop singer, wanders the streets of Paris for ninety minutes, from five to six-thirty on a summer afternoon, while awaiting the results of a biopsy that could diagnose her with cancer. In this time, her perception of herself and the world changes radically: her beauty, her fame, and her superficial certainties crumble in the face of the fear of death.
Agnès Varda, a pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague, creates an existentialist film of disconcerting modernity. Cléo’s journey is a transformation from object to subject. At the beginning of the film, she is defined by the gaze of others: she is a spoiled doll, a beauty to be admired, an image reflected in countless mirrors. Her identity is performative, constructed for others’ consumption. As long as I’m beautiful, I’m alive,” she declares, tying her existence to her appearance.
The fear of death acts as a catalyst. As she walks through Paris, Cléo begins to see the world for the first time, instead of simply being seen. Her gaze shifts from herself to others, to the life pulsating around her. She abandons her wig, a symbol of her artificial identity, and begins to confront her vulnerability.
The encounter with the soldier Antoine, who is also facing the possibility of death in the war, is the turning point. For the first time, Cléo has an authentic conversation, stripped of all artifice. She introduces herself by her real name, Florence, and shares her fear. In that moment, she ceases to be an image and becomes a person. Varda’s film is an ode to awakening, a magnificent portrait of a woman who learns to define her own existence not through the gaze of others, but through her own fragile and precious humanity.
Chasing Butterflies
Comedy, romantic, by Rod Bingaman, United States, 2009.
Nina runs away from home hours before her wedding. In order not to postpone her mother's wedding ceremony, she pretends to be Nina and marries her boyfriend. Soon after they begin their search to find Nina and bring her back: Nina's husband is convinced that she no longer loves him. A fifteen-year-old nerdy boy meets Nina on the street and tries to impress her with his father's Corvette that he sneaked away without having her driver's license. Meanwhile, a rebellious young woman and her boyfriend who has escaped from prison meet the boy and steal his Corvette, sowing panic with a series of thefts as they head to Canada, in search of a better life and money to make their living. love dream. Meanwhile, Nina meets on a bus a man on the run from a failed marriage: a famous local radio broadcaster who has been abandoned by his wife. But the bus will be the target of a robbery by the engaged couple "Natural Born Killers".
Chasing the Butterflies is an action-packed romantic comedy populated by characters destined to cross paths. Love gives them energy or scares them, everyone is on the run in search of a better life or because they don't know how to deal with responsibilities. Everyone refuses to be imprisoned in social conventions even when they themselves have sought them, even when the social convention is that of a marriage to a man you still love. An on the road littered with grotesque situations and hilarious dialogues, often in American slang, made independently, with a very interesting cast.
LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
At the end of the 18th century, the painter Marianne is hired to create the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent and is destined for a marriage she does not want. Since Héloïse refuses to pose, Marianne must observe her secretly during their walks and then paint her in secret. Between the two women, in almost total isolation on a Breton island, a deep intimacy is born, made of gazes, art, and love.
Céline Sciamma’s film is the purest and most powerful manifestation of the female gaze in contemporary cinema. It is a work built entirely on the act of looking, but one that subverts centuries of art and film history in which the woman was the passive muse and the man the creative artist. Here, the relationship between artist and model is reciprocal, an exchange of equals. When you look at me, who do I look at?” Héloïse asks, dismantling the hierarchy of the gaze.
In a world almost completely devoid of men, Sciamma creates a utopian space where female desire, creativity, and intellect can flourish freely. The love between Marianne and Héloïse is not only romantic but also intellectual and artistic. It is born from collaboration, conversation, and the sharing of ideas and experiences. The film itself becomes a portrait, not just of a woman, but of a love that is also a creative act.
The narrative is imbued with a poignant melancholy, the awareness that this love is a moment suspended in time, destined to end. But the film rejects tragedy. Art becomes the vehicle of memory, a way to make eternal what is ephemeral. The final images, in which the two women “see” each other again through art and music, are of devastating emotional power. It is not the story of a lost love, but of a love that continues to exist, forever, in the gaze and in memory.
Carol
In New York in the early 1950s, Therese, a young aspiring photographer, works in a department store during the Christmas holidays. There she meets Carol, an elegant and sophisticated woman trapped in an unhappy marriage. An immediate and deep attraction sparks between them, which turns into a clandestine love affair, challenging the rigid social and moral conventions of a deeply repressive era.
Todd Haynes directs a melodrama of extraordinary visual refinement and emotional depth. Carol is a film that tells a forbidden love story not through grand declarations, but through the unsaid, the secret language of glances, gestures, and silences laden with meaning. In an era when this kind of love had no name, nor a place in society, every touch of a hand on a shoulder, every prolonged gaze, becomes an act of courage and transgression.
The film masterfully captures the suffocating atmosphere of the 1950s, a society of appearances where authentic emotions must be hidden. Haynes often uses shots through glass, windows, and mirrors to emphasize distance, isolation, and the feeling of being watched and judged. The two protagonists are constantly framed, visually trapped just as they are socially.
The strength of Carol and Therese lies in their determination to live their feelings, despite the devastating consequences. Carol risks losing her daughter, the only thing that matters to her, because of a “morality clause” in her divorce. Her final choice, not to deny her own nature to conform, is an act of enormous dignity. The film is a powerful portrait of how love, even in the most hostile circumstances, can be an unstoppable force of self-affirmation.
The Piano Teacher
Erika Kohut is a respected piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. By day, she is an austere and uncompromising figure, but her private life is an abyss of psychological repression and sexual perversions, dominated by a possessive and suffocating mother. The arrival of a young and talented student, Walter, who falls in love with her, unleashes her sadomasochistic fantasies, dragging them both into a dangerous and destructive game.
Michael Haneke’s cinema is ruthless, a clinical dissection of the pathologies of bourgeois society. The Piano Teacher is perhaps his most disturbing and radical work, an uncompromising exploration of female repression and its devastating consequences. Isabelle Huppert’s performance is chillingly precise, a portrait of a woman whose intelligence and artistic sensitivity have been twisted into a weapon of self-destruction.
The film is a brutal analysis of the effects of a castrating upbringing. The symbiotic and sick relationship with her mother has prevented Erika from developing a healthy sexuality. Her desire, unable to express itself normally, manifests through voyeurism, self-harm, and fantasies of submission and dominance. Music, which should be a form of liberation, becomes another cage for her, a realm of technical perfection devoid of true emotion.
When Walter offers her a seemingly “normal” love, Erika does not know how to handle it. She can only relate to him through the language of perversion, trying to turn him into an instrument of her pain. The Piano Teacher is a difficult film that offers no consolation. It is the extreme portrait of a woman whose intellectual strength cannot save her from an emotional abyss carved by a society and a family that have systematically denied her humanity.
Lady Bird
Christine McPherson, who insists on being called “Lady Bird,” is a teenager in her senior year at a Catholic school in Sacramento in 2002. She dreams of escaping her city, which she considers boring, to attend a prestigious college on the East Coast. The film follows her year of transition, through friendships, first loves, disappointments, and, above all, a turbulent, conflicting, and deeply loving relationship with her mother, Marion.
Greta Gerwig, with her directorial debut, creates a coming-of-age story of disarming sincerity and acuity. Lady Bird stands out for how it shifts the genre’s focus: the real conflict, the real love story, is not with the boys, but between a daughter and her mother. Their relationship is the beating heart of the film, a battlefield of daily misunderstandings and, at the same time, an unbreakable bond.
Lady Bird’s strength is her stubborn search for identity. Her self-imposed name is the first act of self-definition, an attempt to create a version of herself that is not defined by her family or her city. She is a character full of contradictions: arrogant and insecure, selfish and generous. Gerwig portrays her without judgment, with an affection that celebrates her imperfections.
The film is also a love letter to that time in life when you desperately try to leave, only to discover, once you are far away, the value of what you left behind. The relationship with her mother is a constant alternation of fierce clashes and moments of unexpected tenderness. Marion is tough, critical, but her love is fierce and unwavering. Lady Bird is a moving and authentic portrait of how we become ourselves not in opposition, but in relation to the women who raised us, in a dialogue that continues even at a distance.
Dementia
Horror, noir, by John Parker, United States, 1955.
It's night. A woman suddenly wakes up from a nightmare in a seedy hotel in the Los Angeles suburbs. She leaves the room and wanders the neighborhood. She meets a dwarf who sells newspapers with the title "Mysterious Stabbing". In a dark alley, a drunkard harasses her and a policeman rescues her. She then she meets a smartly dressed man with a thin mustache. The man gives her a flower and convinces her to get into the limo with a rich fat guy. As they drive through the city, the man thinks back to his childhood trauma and the violent father who stabbed him with a knife after he shot his unfaithful mother. The rich man takes her to have fun in several nightclubs and then to her apartment. He first ignores the woman while she gorges herself with a big meal. She seduces him, and he approaches her excitedly.
A visionary and hallucinatory nightmare, without dialogue, during a night of a lonely woman in Los Angeles. Between horror, film noir and expressionist film, initially conceived as a short film by Parker based on a dream told him by his secretary, Barrett, who also became the film's interpreter. The film was blocked by the New York State Film Board before being released in theaters in 1955. Later Jack H. Harris bought it and created a new version, with a different cut of editing, also adding a voiceover. and changing the title. This is the original version.
Without dialogue
Orlando
The story begins in Elizabethan England with the young nobleman Orlando, whom the Queen orders never to grow old. Miraculously, Orlando lives through four centuries of history, experiencing adventures, loves, and disappointments. Midway through his journey, during a diplomatic mission in Constantinople, he awakens transformed into a woman. He will continue to live through the ages, experiencing the different restrictions and expectations imposed on both sexes.
Sally Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel is a visually sumptuous and intellectually bold exploration of gender identity and its fluidity. Orlando is a radical film that dismantles the idea that gender is a fixed biological characteristic, presenting it instead as a social construction, a performance that changes with the changing customs and eras.
Orlando’s transformation from man to woman is presented with an almost magical naturalness. “Same person. No difference at all,” Orlando declares, looking directly at the camera. Yet, society treats her completely differently. As a woman, she loses her property rights, is considered fragile, and her intellect is belittled. The film uses the fashion and costumes of each era to visually emphasize how social conventions cage and define bodies and roles.
Orlando’s strength is his/her ability to transcend these categories. Having lived as both a man and a woman, they possess a unique understanding of the human condition. The film is an ironic and sharp critique of patriarchy and its rigid dichotomies. It is a hymn to the freedom to be oneself beyond labels, a journey through history to discover that the only true identity is the one we create for ourselves, in a constant state of becoming.
Frida
The film traces the bold and tormented life of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. From the near-fatal accident that marked her forever in body and art, to her tumultuous and passionate relationship with the muralist Diego Rivera. The narrative weaves her surrealist art, born from pain, with her communist political beliefs, her fluid sexuality, and her struggle to establish herself as an artist in a male-dominated world.
Julie Taymor’s Frida is a biopic that succeeds in capturing the vibrant and revolutionary essence of its protagonist. The film does not merely recount Frida Kahlo’s life but seeks to enter her imagination, bringing her paintings to life through visually powerful sequences that blend reality and surrealism. Her art is not a mere accessory but the language through which she expresses her physical pain, her passion, and her worldview.
Frida’s strength is her indomitable resilience. Despite a battered body, betrayals, and disappointments, she never presents herself as a victim. She transforms her suffering into art, her bed of pain into a creative laboratory. She is a woman who lives every aspect of her life with uncompromising intensity: love, politics, sex. She rejects conventions, both in her way of dressing, which proudly reclaims her Mexican identity, and in her sexual and intellectual freedom.
The relationship with Diego Rivera is central, a destructive yet vital bond made of love, betrayal, and deep artistic affinity. But the film makes it clear that Frida was never just “the wife of.” She was an artist in her own right, a revolutionary who used her life and her body as a canvas to create a unique and immortal work of art, a symbol of strength and nonconformity.
Spencer
It’s Christmas 1991, and the royal family is gathered at the Sandringham estate. For Princess Diana, these three days are a nightmare of suffocating rituals and family tensions. Her marriage to Prince Charles is on its last legs. Hounded by paparazzi, tormented by bulimia, and trapped in a role that is destroying her, Diana fights an internal battle for her sanity and identity, finding comfort only in her children and the ghost of Anne Boleyn.
Pablo Larraín does not create a traditional biopic, but a “fable from a true tragedy.” Spencer is a psychological horror, a claustrophobic immersion into the mind of a woman on the brink. The film is not interested in the chronicle of events, but in the emotional experience of imprisonment. Sandringham is not a palace, but a gilded cage, where every gesture is controlled, every outfit imposed, every meal an ordeal.
Diana’s strength, in this film, is her inner rebellion. It is not a political or public strength, but a desperate attempt not to succumb, to cling to fragments of her true identity. Her struggle against royal traditions, her refusal to wear the clothes chosen for her, her nocturnal escapes to her abandoned childhood home, are acts of resistance against a system that wants to annihilate her.
Kristen Stewart’s performance is extraordinary in capturing Diana’s fragility, anxiety, and repressed anger. The film portrays her as a profoundly lonely woman, whose only alliance is with other “sacrificed” female figures, like Anne Boleyn. Spencer is the portrait of a woman fighting not for a crown, but for the right to simply be herself, an act of rebellion that, in that context, is the most radical of all.
Promising Young Woman
Cassie was a promising medical student, but she dropped out after her best friend, Nina, was the victim of a rape that destroyed her life. Now, Cassie lives a double life: by day she works in a coffee shop, by night she frequents bars, pretending to be drunk to expose the “nice guys” who try to take advantage of her. Her mission of revenge takes a new turn when a former classmate re-enters her life.
Emerald Fennell delivers a bold and unsettling work, a revenge thriller that subverts the clichés of the genre and the romantic comedy to launch a fierce critique of rape culture. Promising Young Woman is an uncomfortable film that uses a pop, colorful aesthetic to tell a story of trauma, anger, and grief.
Cassie’s strength is her strategic intelligence and her unwavering anger. She is not a passive victim; she is a hunter, an avenging angel who stages a weekly ritual to force men to confront their own predatory nature. The film brilliantly dismantles the myth of the “nice guy,” showing how complicity, silence, and the minimization of violence are just as damaging as the act itself.
The narrative explores the complexity of trauma. Cassie’s mission is not just revenge, but also a way to process a pain that has paralyzed her. The film offers no easy catharsis. Her path is lonely and dangerous, and the shocking and brutal ending underscores the reality of a system that protects the guilty and punishes the women who dare to challenge it. It is a powerful work that forces the viewer to face a truth they would rather ignore.
Early Summer
Drama, by Yasujirō Ozu, Japan, 1951.
Noriko, a secretary from Tokyo, resides in Kamakura with her family along with her parents Shūkichi and Shige, her elder brother Kōichi, a doctor, her wife Fumiko and their 2 boys Minoru and Isamu. Noriko's friends are divided into 2 groups, married and single, who constantly tease each other, with Aya Tamura being her close ally in the single group. Noriko's family pressures Noriko into accepting Satake's proposed marriage, agreeing that it's time for her to get married and thinking that marriage is perfect for someone her age. When Yabe's mother Tami impulsively asks Noriko to marry Yabe and follow them on their move north, Noriko accepts her proposal. The family accepts Noriko's decision with resignation and, before she leaves, they take a picture together. Gorgeous drama about family unity that is part of Ozu's thematic trilogy called The Noriko Trilogy: Late Spring, Time of the Wheat Harvest and Journey to Tokyo, all starring Setsuko Hara as a character named Noriko, on the theme of the family on the verge of a great change.
Food for thought
Love never suspects, it is never jealous. Love never interferes in the freedom of the other. Love never imposes anything on the other. Love gives freedom, and freedom can only exist if there is space. Love should be a gift given and taken in freedom, but there should be no claim. If you can have freedom and love at the same time, you won't need anything else. You will have obtained everything, everything you live for will have been given to you.
LANGUAGE: Japanese
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
Anatomy of a Fall
Sandra, a German writer, lives in an isolated chalet in the French Alps with her husband Samuel and their visually impaired son Daniel. When Samuel is found dead at the base of the house, the fall seems suspicious. Suicide or murder? Sandra becomes the main suspect, and the ensuing trial is not just an investigation into her husband’s death, but a ruthless dissection of their relationship, their life as a couple, and Sandra’s own complex and ambiguous personality.
Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner is a tense and compelling legal thriller that transcends the boundaries of the genre to become a profound reflection on the elusive nature of truth and the difficulty of judging a life from the outside. The court does not just try an alleged crime, but an entire relationship, putting the ambitions, frustrations, betrayals, and power dynamics of a couple on trial.
Sandra’s strength, masterfully played by Sandra Hüller, is her impenetrability. She is an intelligent, successful, sexually free woman, but also cold, at times selfish. She refuses to conform to the role of the grieving widow or the victim. During the trial, every aspect of her life is used against her: her language (German, in a French court), her bisexuality, her professional success that overshadowed her husband’s.
The film challenges our ability to arrive at an objective truth. We hear contradictory testimonies, recordings of violent arguments, psychological interpretations. In the end, we do not know what really happened. Anatomy of a Fall shows us how a woman who does not conform to social expectations can easily be turned into a monster, and how every relationship is an abyss of complexity that no trial can ever truly illuminate.
Elle
Michèle Leblanc, a successful businesswoman at the head of a video game company, is raped in her home by a masked assailant. Instead of reporting the incident to the police or collapsing under the weight of the trauma, Michèle reacts in a completely unexpected way. With coldness and pragmatism, she continues her life, trying to discover the identity of her attacker and engaging in a perverse and dangerous psychological game with him.
Paul Verhoeven directs a provocative and morally ambiguous thriller that demolishes every stereotype about female victimization. Elle is a film that constantly challenges the viewer, forcing them to question their expectations of how a woman “should” react to violence. Michèle’s reaction is neither fear nor submission; it is curiosity, control, almost defiance.
Isabelle Huppert’s performance is, once again, masterful. Her Michèle is a complex woman, marked by a childhood trauma that has made her tough and impenetrable. She is a figure of power, accustomed to handling difficult situations both at work and in her complicated private life. The violence she suffers does not define her; it becomes another chaotic element in an existence already full of conflicts, which she faces with the same ruthless attitude she applies to business.
The film explores the gray areas of desire, power, and perversion. The relationship that develops between Michèle and her attacker is a murky web of fear and attraction, a role-playing game in which the boundaries between victim and perpetrator become blurred. Elle is a radical work that refuses to offer easy moral answers, giving us the portrait of an indomitable woman whose strength lies in her absolute and disconcerting freedom from conventions.
The Favourite
In the early 18th century, England is at war with France. The frail and unstable Queen Anne sits on the throne, but the country is effectively ruled by her close friend and advisor, Lady Sarah. The arrival at court of Abigail, Sarah’s disgraced cousin, upsets the balance. Abigail uses her charm to ingratiate herself with the Queen, sparking a ruthless rivalry with Sarah to become the new “favourite.”
Yorgos Lanthimos transforms the costume drama into a black, acidic, and grotesque comedy about the dynamics of power. The Favourite is a film in which men are marginal figures, pawns in a ruthless chess game conducted entirely by three women. Power is not a political abstraction, but a personal struggle, fought with cunning, manipulation, sex, and psychological cruelty.
The film offers a complex and unidealized portrait of female relationships. There is no trace of sisterhood; on the contrary, the rivalry between Sarah and Abigail is fierce and no-holds-barred. Sarah wields her power with brutal honesty, while Abigail uses flattery and seduction. Queen Anne, with her ailing body and her grief for her lost children, is the emotional and political center of this triangle, a power vacuum to be filled and controlled.
Lanthimos uses his distinctive style – surreal dialogue, distorting wide-angle lenses, a tragicomic atmosphere – to create a closed and claustrophobic world. The court is a gilded cage where love is inextricably linked to power and loyalty is just a strategy. The Favourite is a cynical and brilliant reflection on the vanity of power and the loneliness that comes with it, showing how women, when given the opportunity, can be just as ruthless as men.
I, Tonya
The film tells the true, absurd, and tragic story of figure skater Tonya Harding. Raised in an environment of poverty and abuse, under the control of a violent and unaffectionate mother, Tonya emerges as an extraordinary talent, the first American woman to perform a triple axel in competition. Her career, however, is irreparably compromised by her involvement in the attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
I, Tonya is not a conventional biopic. Using a mockumentary style, with contradictory interviews of the protagonists breaking the fourth wall, Craig Gillespie’s film explores the subjective nature of truth and fiercely criticizes the way media and society build and destroy their idols.
The film is a powerful indictment of American classism. Tonya, with her homemade costumes, her rock music, and her rough manners, did not fit the “ice princess” image that the sport demanded. She was a raw talent in a world that privileged appearance and social background. Her strength was not just her athletic ability, but her stubbornness to compete in a system that rejected her.
At the same time, I, Tonya is a devastating portrait of a cycle of abuse. The violence Tonya suffers from her mother and then her husband is presented with a black humor that underscores its tragic normality in her life. The film does not absolve her, but contextualizes her, showing her as the product of a toxic environment. It is the portrait of a woman whose strength and talent were not enough to save her from a world that first exploited her and then turned her into a national joke.
Festival in Cannes
Sentimental comedy, by Henry Jaglom, United States, 2001.
Cannes, 1999. Alice, an actress, wants to direct an independent film, and is looking for financiers. She meets Kaz, a talkative businessman, who promises her $ 3 million if she uses Millie, a French star who has passed her youth and no longer finds interesting roles. Alice tells the story of the film to Millie and the actress falls in love with the project. But Rick, a prominent producer working for a large Hollywood studio, needs Millie for a small part in a film due to shoot in the fall, or else he'll lose her star, Tom Hanks. Is Kaz a real producer or is he a charlatan? Rick is actually not as rich as he used to be and he absolutely has to convince Alice to give up Millie in order to close the big project deal with Tom Hanks. Millie is undecided about what to choose: an indie film she loves but with no big money or a small part in the Hollywood movie that pays very well? Meanwhile, a young actress named Blue becomes the star of the festival and Kaz discovers a new love. The wheel of life, and of show business, turns, between feelings, existential budgets and film business. A film shot with great stylistic freedom, like a documentary, during the 1999 edition of the festival, which focuses on the performances of the actors with a spontaneous and fluid improvisation method, inspired by Cassavetes' cinema. A light and moving sentimental comedy, where the conflicts and frailties of the stars of the show business gradually emerge, bringing the important themes of life to the surface.
Food for thought
Working as a cog in a system or for your own vision? Dependence or independence? Both are not completely real: the reality that happens everywhere, in any industry, in any natural event, is interdependence. We are all absolutely interdependent, not only between men, not only between nations, but between trees and humans, between animals and trees, between birds and sun, between moon and oceans, everything is intertwined with everything else. The humanity of the past did not understand this fundamental law, and it created big problems.
LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
Arrival
When twelve mysterious alien spacecraft land at different points across the globe, the U.S. military recruits Dr. Louise Banks, an expert linguist, to establish communication. As the world teeters on the brink of a global war, Louise must decipher their complex, non-linear language, a process that will not only reveal the purpose of their visit but will forever change her perception of time and life.
Arrival is a science fiction film that centers not on action or technology, but on intelligence, empathy, and communication. The protagonist, Dr. Louise Banks, is a radically different hero from the genre’s standards. Her strength is not physical, but intellectual and emotional. She saves the world not with weapons, but with words, with her ability to listen, to understand, and to build a bridge between two species.
Denis Villeneuve’s film is a profound meditation on language and how it shapes our thoughts and our reality. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that the language we speak influences our worldview, is the narrative heart of the film. By learning the circular language of the aliens, Louise begins to perceive time in a non-linear way, experiencing past, present, and future simultaneously.
This ability gives her immense power, but also a terrible burden. Her final choice, linked to her daughter’s future, is an act of love and courage of extraordinary power. Arrival is a hymn to collaboration and understanding in a world dominated by fear and division. It is a film that celebrates a form of female heroism based on vulnerability, intellect, and the deep awareness that communication is the most powerful weapon we have.
Nomadland
After losing everything in the Great Recession, Fern, a woman in her sixties, decides to leave her ghost town in Nevada and embark on a journey through the American West. Living in her van, which she calls “Vanguard,” she joins a community of modern-day nomads, people who have abandoned conventional life to seek seasonal work and a new form of freedom and community on the road.
Chloé Zhao’s Oscar-winning film is a poetic and melancholic portrait of a woman trying to rebuild her life on the fringes of the broken American dream. Shot in a quasi-documentary style and featuring real nomads playing themselves, Nomadland is a work of rare authenticity, exploring loss, resilience, and the search for a new meaning of “home.
Fern’s strength, played with extraordinary intensity by Frances McDormand, is quiet and tenacious. She is not a rebel, but a survivor. Her nomadism is not an ideological choice, but a necessity that transforms into a form of liberation. She learns to be self-sufficient, to repair her van, to find work in places like Amazon warehouses, a symbol of an economy that exploits and discards.
The film does not romanticize the harshness of this life, but celebrates its beauty. The vast landscapes of the American West become a mirror of Fern’s interiority, a place of solitude but also of infinite possibility. The true discovery of her journey, however, is community. In gatherings with other nomads, Fern finds solidarity, sharing, and a sense of belonging that settled society had denied her. Nomadland is a hymn to human dignity and the ability to find home not in a place, but in the connections we create along the way.
Toni Erdmann
Winfried, a retired music teacher with a penchant for pranks, is worried about his daughter Ines, an ambitious and workaholic corporate consultant living in Bucharest. Sensing that she has lost her sense of humor and joy for life, Winfried decides to pay her a surprise visit. After a failed first attempt, he reinvents himself as “Toni Erdmann,” an eccentric life coach with a wig and fake teeth, and begins to stalk her at her business meetings and social outings.
Maren Ade’s film is a comedy as hilarious as it is deeply moving about the disconnection between a father and a daughter, and a sharp critique of the inhumanity of the modern corporate world. The long and digressive narrative takes its time to explore the complex dynamics of a family relationship worn down by distance and opposing lifestyles.
Ines is an extraordinarily complex female character. She is a successful woman in a male-dominated environment, forced to suppress all emotion and vulnerability to survive. Her life is a succession of meetings, PowerPoint presentations, and forced socializing. She has sacrificed her personal life and happiness on the altar of her career. Her strength is her armor, a mask of professionalism that hides a deep emptiness.
The arrival of Toni Erdmann is an absurd and disruptive act of love. With his embarrassing pranks, Winfried forces Ines out of her bubble, to confront the absurdity of her existence. The film culminates in two cathartic and unforgettable scenes: Ines singing Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” and her impromptu “naked party.” These are moments of liberation where the armor finally cracks, revealing the fragile woman in need of connection hidden beneath the corporate consultant.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
In the desolate and spectral Iranian town of Bad City, a lone vampire, dressed in a chador that billows like a cape, roams the night. She targets men who disrespect women: drug dealers, pimps, violent men. Her immortal and solitary existence is shaken by her encounter with Arash, a kind and melancholic young man, also a lost soul in that hopeless place.
Billed as “the first Iranian Vampire Western,” Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut film is a cult work, a stylistic black-and-white gem that mixes genres and influences to create something unique. The vampire, known only as “the Girl,” is a fascinating and powerful figure, a feminist metaphor for revenge and protection.
In a patriarchal society, the Girl subverts power dynamics. It is she who hunts, who inspires terror. Her chador, a symbol of modesty and oppression in some contexts, is transformed here into an icon of supernatural power, a superhero’s cape as she glides through the dark streets. She is an avenging angel who punishes the worst of toxic masculinity.
But beneath her menacing facade, the Girl is profoundly lonely. Her room is filled with pop icon posters and she listens to music, revealing a desire for normality and connection. The encounter with Arash introduces a possibility of love and redemption. The film is not just a revenge story, but also a reflection on loneliness and the possibility of finding another kindred spirit in the most unlikely of places, creating a unique atmosphere of melancholy, danger, and romance.
Hollywood Dreams
Comedy, drama, by Henry Jaglom, United States, 2007.
Aspiring actress Margie Chizek seeks stardom in Hollywood. She is rejected by the cinema scene, falls in love, discovers the deceptions behind the world of film advertising and understands her identity better than her. Saved from ruin by a kind producer, Margie manages to enter the world of the rich in Hollywood and falls in love with a young actor, who is building her career by pretending to be gay. The couple will face show business and sexual identity manipulation. Hollywood Dreams engages the audience thanks to the extraordinary performance of Tanna Frederick and her character as a tormented and emotionally unstable actress, a surprising and moving performance. The character of a fragile woman, a prisoner of false myths, at times repellent and bizarre. In the hands of the nonconformist independent director Henry Jaglom the charm of the false illusions of success is told in an exemplary and irresistible way.
The history of cinema is full of films about people making films, which can be interpreted as a universal story: everyone strives for success, recognition and fame in a competitive field. Henry Jaglom's Hollywood Dreams is a subversive film, a satire of an industry based on deception. Inspired by the productive freedom and improvisation of the actors of John Cassavetes' independent cinema, more rigorous and exciting than Henry Jaglom's other films, Hollywood Dreams focuses on a smiling actress who suddenly becomes famous. The director, in his fifteenth film, becomes more melancholy, and takes a journey between cinematic memories and gender identity confusion. The style is always the realistic one, almost a documentary, of other Jaglom films. One of the best known American independent directors in a nostalgic mood, reflecting on the negative aspects of fame and success.
LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
Fish Tank
Mia, a hot-tempered and isolated fifteen-year-old, lives in a council estate in Essex with her single mother and younger sister. Expelled from school and estranged from her former friends, her only passion and escape is hip-hop dancing, which she practices alone in an empty apartment. Her monotonous and confrontational life is turned upside down by the arrival of Connor, her mother’s new and charming boyfriend, who seems to be the first person to notice her and encourage her talent.
Andrea Arnold’s cinema is characterized by a raw realism and a deep empathy for her characters, especially young women living on the margins. Fish Tank is a powerful and unfiltered portrait of a difficult adolescence, an immersion into a world of limited opportunities and dysfunctional affections.
Mia’s strength is her raw energy, her anger, her desperate search for a way to express herself. Dance is her language, the only space where she can be herself, free from the judgment and neglect that surround her. The film, shot with a handheld camera that follows Mia closely, makes us feel her claustrophobia, the feeling of being trapped in a “fish tank,” as the title suggests.
The relationship with Connor is the complex and problematic heart of the film. For the first time, Mia feels seen, appreciated. But Connor’s attention proves to be ambiguous and dangerous, blurring the lines between paternal affection and sexual desire. Fish Tank is a ruthless analysis of how adolescent vulnerability can be exploited and how the failures of adults inevitably fall upon their children. It is a film that offers no easy solutions, but leaves an indelible impression with its honesty and emotional power.
Bread and Tulips
Rosalba, a housewife from Pescara, is forgotten at a highway rest stop during a family trip. Instead of waiting for her husband and sons to come back for her, in an impulsive act of rebellion, she decides to hitchhike and finds herself in Venice. There, she starts a new life, finding a job at a florist, lodging with a melancholic Icelandic waiter, and a new circle of eccentric friends. Her escape transforms into a journey of self-discovery.
Silvio Soldini’s film is a delicate and poetic comedy, a modern fable about the possibility of reinventing oneself. Bread and Tulips tells of a quiet revolution, that of a woman who for years has been invisible to her family, taken for granted, reduced to the role of wife and mother. The incident at the rest stop is the spark that allows her to see herself as an individual again.
Rosalba’s strength is her ability to embrace chance and rediscover dormant desires and talents, like playing the accordion. In Venice, a labyrinthine and dreamlike city, she gets lost only to find herself. Her transformation is not a grand heroic gesture, but an accumulation of small courageous choices: accepting a job, making new friends, allowing herself to be happy.
The film is a hymn to kindness and the human connections that can save us. The relationship between Rosalba and the waiter Fernando, played by a magnificent Bruno Ganz, is a mature love story, made of silences, understanding, and respect. Bread and Tulips is a heartwarming film, a reminder that it is never too late to change your life and to find beauty in simple things.
Mustang
In a remote Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live with their grandmother and uncle. After being seen playing innocently on the beach with some boys, their conservative family reacts with brutality. The house is turned into a prison: the girls are withdrawn from school, forced to learn domestic chores, and prepared for arranged marriages. But the sisters, united by an unbreakable bond, do not give up and fight for their freedom.
Mustang is a powerful and heartbreaking film, a coming-of-age story that takes on the tones of an escape thriller. Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s film is a fierce denunciation of patriarchal and religious oppression, which sees female vitality and sexuality as a threat to be controlled and repressed. The five sisters, like the wild horses of the title, represent a vital energy that refuses to be tamed.
The true strength of the protagonists is their sisterhood. Faced with an external world that wants them isolated and submissive, their bond becomes their only weapon of resistance. They are a single body, a collective entity that shares dreams, fears, and strategies of rebellion. The film is told from the perspective of the youngest, Lale, whose innocent yet determined gaze guides us through the horror of their imprisonment.
The narrative is a crescendo of tension. As the older sisters are married off, one by one, the hope of escape focuses on Lale. The film is not just a critique of a specific society, but a universal reflection on the desire for freedom and the brutality of a system that seeks to extinguish the light of young women. It is an unforgettable work, full of life, anger, and hope.
Zero Dark Thirty
After the September 11th attacks, the CIA begins a decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden. At the center of this operation is Maya, a young and brilliant analyst who dedicates her entire existence to this mission. Working in a male-dominated environment and confronting the brutality of torture and bureaucratic dead ends, Maya follows a lead with obsessive determination that will take her to the al-Qaeda leader’s hideout.
Kathryn Bigelow’s film is a tense and meticulous thriller that offers a complex and unconventional portrait of a woman in power. Maya is not a traditional hero. She is a difficult character, almost an anti-hero. She is cold, monomaniacal, her humanity almost completely consumed by her mission. Her strength is not empathetic or compassionate; it is an intellectual strength, a glacial determination, and an unwavering belief in her own abilities.
Zero Dark Thirty explores the personal cost of such dedication. Maya has no life outside of her work. She has no friends, no relationships, no interests. Her identity completely merges with her hunt. The film shows her in an environment, that of intelligence and special operations, which is the apotheosis of the male world. She does not try to fit in or be “one of the boys“; she imposes herself with her competence, forcing her skeptical superiors to take her seriously.
The final scene is emblematic. After the mission succeeds, Maya sits alone on an empty military plane. The pilot asks her where she wants to go. She doesn’t answer and begins to cry. They are the first tears we see her shed. They are tears of triumph, of exhaustion, of emptiness. She has achieved her goal, but she has sacrificed everything else. The film leaves us with a powerful question: was it worth it?
Miss Oyu
Drama, by Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1951.
Bachelor Shinnosuke falls in love with Miss Oyu, the companion of his younger sister Shizu who visits him as a future bride. The family taboo prevents Shinnosuke from marrying Oyu. He marries Shizu without consummating their marriage so that Shinnosuke can remain faithful to the unconscious Oyu. However, the couple's commitment to appearances has a cost. The lack of sexuality and the malicious rumors about the ménage-a-trois lead to recrimination, separation and further pain. Miss Oyu is a radical reworking by Mizoguchi and his screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda of Junichiro Tanizaki's novel The Reed Cutter (1932). Miss Oyu moves in the aura of high art and good taste: opening credits beyond paintings of clouds, compositions of Chinese and Japanese art masterpieces, interiors decorated with refined furnishings and art objects, Japanese classical music recitals and songs derived from Japanese poetry, references to Heian costume, history and literature, historical and natural beauties; Japanese rituals such as ikebana, bonsai and tea ceremonies. A grand depiction of exotic and picturesque Japanese culture, Ms. Oyu was the first of the 1950s costume dramas that would make Mizoguchi famous outside of Japan.
LANGUAGE: Japanese language
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
Roma
Mexico City, early 1970s. The film follows a year in the life of a middle-class family in the Roma neighborhood, through the eyes of Cleo, their Mixtec domestic worker. As the family faces the crisis caused by the father’s abandonment, Cleo experiences her own personal joys and sorrows, including a love that turns into betrayal and an unexpected pregnancy. Their lives intertwine against the backdrop of the social and political turmoil of the era.
Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical masterpiece, shot in stunning black and white, is a love letter to the women who raised him and a tribute to their silent, resilient strength. Roma is not a film of grand events, but of small daily gestures, of domestic rituals that become a lifeline in a world in turmoil.
The film is built around two central female figures: Cleo and the family’s mother, Sofía. Both are abandoned by the men in their lives and must find a way to move forward. Despite their differences in class and ethnicity, a bond of solidarity forms between them, an unconventional family based on mutual care. The strength of these women is not shouted, but lived. It is the strength of those who get up every morning to care for others, who face pain with dignity, who continue to do the laundry while the world around them collapses.
Yalitza Aparicio’s performance as Cleo is extraordinarily powerful. Her character, often silent and on the edge of the frame, is the true emotional center of the film. The climactic scene at the sea, where Cleo saves the children by risking her life, is a devastating catharsis, a moment when her repressed pain finally explodes. Roma is a work of art that celebrates the invisible, the strength of women who, without making a sound, hold the world together.
The Color Purple
In the early 20th century in the American South, Celie is a young African-American woman who endures unspeakable abuse from her father and then from her husband, the brutal “Mister.” Separated from her beloved sister Nettie, Celie lives an existence of submission and silence, writing letters to God to survive. Her life changes with the arrival of two extraordinary women: the rebellious Sofia and the blues singer Shug Avery, who will teach her to find her voice, her dignity, and her strength.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple is an epic story of suffering and redemption, a powerful hymn to the resilience of the human spirit and, above all, to the strength of sisterhood. Celie’s journey is one of the most heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant in cinema history. From a passive object of abuse, she transforms into a subject aware of her own worth and her right to happiness.
The film shows how Celie’s salvation comes entirely through her bonds with other women. Sofia, with her indomitable pride, shows her that it is possible to say “no” to male domination, even at a terrible price. Shug Avery, sensual and independent, teaches her to love her own body, to discover pleasure, and to find a new form of spirituality, a God who is no longer just a male and distant entity.
Celie’s transformation culminates in the famous dinner scene, where she finally rebels against Mister, claiming her independence. Her path to emancipation is complete when she opens her own pants shop, becoming economically autonomous and creating a space of her own. The Color Purple is an unforgettable testimony to how, even in the deepest darkness, female solidarity can be a light capable of guiding the way to freedom.
Million Dollar Baby
Maggie Fitzgerald, a thirty-something waitress from a disadvantaged background, has a dream: to become a professional boxer. With unwavering determination, she convinces the gruff, elderly trainer Frankie Dunn to take her under his wing. A deep bond forms between them, akin to that of a father and daughter. Under Frankie’s guidance, Maggie begins a rapid and triumphant rise in the world of boxing, but a tragic accident in the ring will change their lives forever.
Clint Eastwood’s film is a powerful and heartbreaking work, a melodrama that uses the world of boxing to explore themes of dreams, sacrifice, and dignity. Million Dollar Baby is the story of a woman who fights with all her might to escape a destiny of poverty and insignificance, seeking in the ring not only victory but also redemption and respect.
Maggie’s strength is not just her physical tenacity, but her purity of spirit. Despite the humiliations and difficulties, she never loses her hunger for life and her gratitude towards Frankie. Their relationship is the heart of the film. Frankie, tormented by the broken relationship with his real daughter, finds in Maggie a second chance to love and care for someone. She, in turn, finds in him the father figure she never had.
The film takes a tragic and unexpected turn, transforming into a profound ethical reflection on the meaning of life and death. The final choice that Frankie is called to make is one of the most difficult and controversial in cinema history. Million Dollar Baby is not an uplifting film; it is a classic tragedy, a punch to the gut that forces us to confront pain, love, and the responsibilities we have towards the people we love.
Jackie
In the days immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy must face her immense private grief under the relentless gaze of the entire world. As she struggles to comfort her children and organize a funeral worthy of her husband’s myth, Jackie gives an interview to a journalist, taking control of the narrative and consciously constructing the legend of “Camelot.
Pablo Larraín creates an anti-biopic, an intimate and fragmented psychological portrait that focuses not on the facts, but on the state of mind of a woman in shock. Jackie is a film about managing trauma and constructing memory. Natalie Portman’s performance is extraordinary in capturing Jackie’s duality: the fragile woman shattered by grief and the determined, calculating public figure.
Jackie’s strength, in this film, is her awareness of the power of images and narrative. She understands that how the world will remember her husband depends on her. In a moment of extreme vulnerability, she finds the strength to become the author of her own story and that of the Kennedy presidency. Her insistence on a grand funeral, modeled on Lincoln’s, is not an act of vanity, but a lucid political and myth-making operation.
The film explores the dichotomy between the private person and the public persona. We see Jackie wandering alone through the empty rooms of the White House, drinking, smoking, trying on clothes, alternating moments of despair with flashes of strategic clarity. Jackie is the portrait of a woman who, in the darkest moment of her life, used her intelligence and her will to transform a national tragedy into an immortal myth, securing her place and that of her husband in history.
Nika
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
The Hours
The film intertwines the stories of three women in three different eras, all connected by Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs Dalloway.” In 1923, Virginia Woolf herself struggles with depression as she begins to write the book. In 1951, Laura Brown, an unhappy pregnant housewife, finds an escape from her suffocating life by reading the novel. In 2001, Clarissa Vaughan, a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway, organizes a party for her poet friend who is dying of AIDS.
The Hours is a complex and poignant meditation on the female condition, on depression, the search for meaning, and the choices that define a life. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham, uses the narrative structure of “Mrs Dalloway” to explore how women, decades apart, confront the same existential questions and social constraints.
The three protagonists, masterfully played by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep, represent different facets of female repression. Virginia is trapped by her mental illness and the expectations of a “normal” life. Laura is a prisoner of the role of the perfect wife and mother in post-war American suburbia. Clarissa, despite living in a freer era, realizes she has lived her life for others.
The film’s strength lies in how it shows that art, in this case a novel, can be a lifeline, a mirror in which to recognize one’s own pain and find the strength to make a choice. All three women are at a crossroads, facing the decision to live or die, to stay or to flee. The Hours is a deeply moving work that gives voice to the inner turmoil and the silent struggle of women searching for a space for their own souls in a world that often does not understand them.
Antonia’s Line
After World War II, the strong-willed and independent Antonia returns to her native Dutch village with her daughter Danielle. There, she establishes an unconventional matriarchal community, a sort of large extended family that welcomes eccentric characters, outcasts, and free spirits. Through five generations of women, the film celebrates life, love, death, and the continuity of the female lineage, in a magical and life-affirming tale.
Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Antonia’s Line is a unique family saga, a feminist utopia that celebrates the strength, wisdom, and independence of women. Antonia is not a rebel fighting against the system; she simply creates an alternative system, a world based on her own rules, founded on tolerance, acceptance, and a deep connection with nature.
The film is a hymn to life in all its forms. It addresses birth and death, joy and sorrow, philosophy and sensuality with the same serenity. Antonia’s community is a microcosm where women are the center, the driving force of everything. They choose their partners, decide when and how to have children (Danielle, for example, chooses to have a daughter without a husband), and pass on their knowledge and strength to the next generations.
Men are not excluded, but their role is redefined. They are no longer the patriarchs, but companions, friends, lovers, who find their place within a matriarchal order. Antonia’s Line is a joyful, eccentric, and profoundly wise film, a story that imagines a different world, a world where the line of succession and power is, without question, female.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
