Opening July 11 – 18, 2022 – Margaret Barton-Fumo reports

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists highlights movies made by and about women. With a vigilant eye toward current releases, we maintain an interactive record of films that are pertinent to our interests. Be they female-made or female-centric productions, they are films that represent a wide range of women’s stories and present complex female characters. As such, they are movies that will most likely be reviewed on AWFJ.org and will qualify for consideration for our annual EDA Awards, celebrating exceptional women working in film behind and in front of the camera. Our members are feature writers, columnists and regular contributors to a variety of media outlets and many of us publish regularly on the festival circuit. Our critical voices are widespread and diverse. We invite you to join us in tracking weekly releases of particular interest. And we welcome information about new films that will help us to keep our records updated and our critics alert. Below is a concise list of new releases set for the week of July 11 to July 18. 2022 that are of particular interest. Film titles highlighted in red have links to full reviews.

Tuesday, July 12 

• Glasshouse – Voyage Media – South Africa – Sci-fi directed by Kelsey Egan, co-written by Egan with Emma Lungiswa De Wet. Confined to their glasshouse, a family survives The Shred, a toxin that erases memory–until the sisters are seduced by a stranger who shatters their peace and stirs a past best left buried.

  Wednesday, July 13

• My Name is Sara – Strand Releasing – USA – Historical drama. Sara is a 13-year-old Polish Jew who finds refuge and is taken in by a Ukrainian farmer and his wife. She soon discovers the dark secrets of her employers’ marriage, compounding the greatest secret she must strive to protect, her true identity.

  Thursday, July 14

• Good Madam – Shudder – South Africa – Horror shot and directed by Jenna Cato Bass. An eerie psychological thriller about Tsidi, who is forced to move in with her estranged mother, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white ‘Madam’ in the wealthy Cape Town suburbs. But as Tsidi tries to heal her family, the ‘spectre’ of ‘Madam’ begins to stir.

  Friday, July 15

• Anonymous Club – Oscilloscope (Cinemas) – Australia – Documentary written and directed by Danny Cohen. An intimate access to the private life of Courtney Barnett, an anti-influencer musician who is a powerful voice for our times.

 

• Bed Rest – USA – Horror written and directed by Lori Evans Taylor. A pregnant woman on bed rest begins to wonder if her house is haunted or if it’s all in her head.

 

• Costa Brava, Lebanon – Kino Lorber (Cinemas; NY Premiere) – Lebanon – Drama directed by Mounia Akl, co-written by Akl with Clara Roquet. A couple decides to leave the toxic pollution of their home city of Beirut, hoping to build a utopian existence in a pristine home in the mountains.

 

• Don’t Make Me Go – Amazon Prime – USA – Drama directed by Hannah Marks and written by Vera Herbert. When a single father learns that he has a fatal brain tumor, he takes his teenage daughter on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her years before, to try to teach her everything she might need over the rest of her life.

 

• Earwig – Juno Films (Cinemas) – UK / France / Belgium – Drama co-written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic. A young girl with ice cubes for teeth begins a mysterious journey.

 

• Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down – Briarcliff Entertainment (Cinemas) – USA – Documentary co-directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West. Looking at the former congresswoman’s courage and perseverance in the aftermath of the 2021 assassination attempt that left her partially paralyzed and with a language impairment, aphasia.

 

• Girls to Buy – VMI Worldwide (Cinemas, VOD) – Poland – Drama directed by Maria Sadowska following a young woman who becomes an escort as a way of getting out of her small town, but she soon discovers she has no control over her situation.

 

• Living Wine – Abramorama (Cinemas) – USA – Documentary directed by Lori Miller following the journeys of natural winemakers in Northern California, during the largest wildfire season on record.

 

• Queen of Glory – Film Movement (Cinemas) – USA – Comedy written, directed by and starring Nana Mensah. Ghanaian-American Sarah is all set to abandon her Ivy League doctoral program to follow her married lover across the country.

 

• Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris – Focus Features (Cinemas) – International Co-Production – Dramedy starring Lesley Manville. A widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress, and decides that she must have one of her own.

 

• Persuasion – Netflix – USA – Jane Austen adaptation directed by Carrie Cracknell, starring Dakota Johnson. Eight years after Anne Elliot was persuaded not to marry a dashing man of humble origins, they meet again. Will she seize her second chance at true love?

 

• She Will – IFC Midnight / Shudder (Cinemas, VOD) – UK – Thriller directed by Charlotte Colbert, co-written by Colbert with Kitty Percy. An aging film star retreats to the Scottish countryside with her nurse to recover from surgery. While there, mysterious forces of revenge emerge from the land where witches were burned.

Film descriptions are adapted from press releases. Titles highlighted in red have links to full reviews. Stay tuned in for next week’s releases! Contact us if we’ve overlooked anything.