Female Film Critics 24/375
If most people spent as much time thinking about what’s below the waves as they do what’s beyond the stars, chances are that more of them would know who Dr. Edith Widder is. But since that’s not the case, we can all be grateful to filmmaker Tasha Van Zandt for the excellent job she does presenting the pioneering oceanographer/marine biologist and her fascinating life’s work in the documentary A Life Illuminated.
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Filmmaker Tasha Van Zandt’s documentary, A Life Illuminated, takes a deep dive into the brilliant career of oceanographer and marine biologist Dr. Edith Widder. a deep seas pioneer whose work in bioluminescence has shed light on the way in which we humans see the seas’ depths and the extraordinary, other worldly creatures who inhabit our planet’s last Earth bound frontier. Filmmaker Van Zant relies on Dr. Widder to narrate her own story, recounting her feminist struggle to be accepted into the male-dominated deep sea scientists profession and sharing her joy at discovering deep sea life.
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Quirky and poignant, Italian writer/director Carolina Cavalli’s The Kidnapping of Arabella tells the story of a young woman named Holly, whose grief and childhood pain conspire to leave her believing that the space-time continuum has somehow brought her face to face with a younger version of herself. As she figures out what to do with that unlikely opportunity, she must ultimately face the reality she’d rather ignore. As the movie begins, Holly, who studies physics and is mourning the loss of her mother, is begrudgingly working at an ice rink, where she opts to blame small holes in the fabric of the universe for unusual moments like randomly finding a tooth on the ice. When, after scamming/bullying a fast-food worker into giving her a free order of fries, Holly encounters a feisty 8-year-old girl in the parking lot, she becomes convinced that the child is, in fact, her younger self, brought to her to give her a second chance at making better life choices. So when the girl offers to pay Holly for a ride to “anywhere but here,” they drive off together.
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Quietly emotional and tenderly sincere, Petite Maman is a poignant tale about loss, connection, and growing up. Blending gentle fantasy elements with grounded, naturalistic performances, writer-director Céline Sciamma tells the story of 8-year-old Nelly, whose parents take her with them to clear out her mother’s childhood home after the death of her beloved grandmother. To her surprise, she finds much more waiting for her there than her mother’s old books and playthings.
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It’s been more than 20 years since writer/English professor Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran became a New York Times bestseller — and nearly 50 since Nafisi began living through the events that inspired it. But her powerful story of politics, prose, and female perseverance under the shadow of Iran’s oppressive regime in the 1980s and ’90s feels extraordinarily timely in Israeli director Eran Riklis’ compelling adaptation which focuses on Nafisi as the main but includes other women’s stories that illustrate the many ways in which women have suffered in Iran since the revolution: Some were arrested and imprisoned, others were beaten, many have tense relationships with the men in their lives. The movie, like the book, makes it clear that the situation in Iran is complex and complicated: Nafisi loves her home and wants to believe it can have a better, brighter, more enlightened future — a sentiment that will likely feel all too familiar to many U.S. viewers these days.
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Reading Lolita in Tehran is Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis’ adaptation of Iranian-American best-selling author and professor of English Azar Nafisi’s acclaimed eponymous memoir about her own experienceds and women’s lives and prospects in post-revolutionary Iran. In the film, Nafisi (brilliantly played by Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband return from America to Iran believing that their beloved homeland has been democratized and is entering a new era of political and cultural freedom. In the film, which is divided into four chapters, each attached to an English literary masterpiece, we see how the circumstances of oppression impact Nafisi and other women in her circle. The film is a The film is galvanizing, heartwrenching and timely study of women’s lives in post-revolution Iran..
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Even if you’re not someone who reads poetry regularly, odds are you’ve heard the line “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” If so, congratulations: You know Mary Oliver’s work! But there was so much more to Oliver’s own wild and precious life than that one oft-quoted excerpt from The Summer Day, as director Sasha Waters makes clear in her thoughtful documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World. Oliver found such profound insights in being in the natural world, and whose poems touched so many. In Sasha Waters’ documentary, a range of famous figures read their favorite Mary Oliver poem or speak about knowing her, including John Waters, Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey, Helena Bonham Carter and Steve Buscemi. Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World explores Mary Oliver’s work and her life, with copious examples of the former, often accompanied by lovely nature imagery, and the latter accompanied by archival footage and stills taken from the poet’s very private and quiet personal life, in this fine, informative and immersive biography of the poet.
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Fashion often feels far from fabulous in writer/director Anna Winocour’s Paris-set drama Couture, which takes a frank look at what goes on behind the scenes in the world of impossibly chic designer dresses and elite runway models. But as it weaves together the stories of three different women — an up-and-coming director, a brand new model, and a make-up artist with big dreams — it creates a memorable fabric of emotion and experience.
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A young girl living in Madrid in the late 1980s learns a lot about life in writer/director Ana Asensio’s charmingly poignant Spanish drama Goat Girl (aka La Niña de la Cabra). Maintaining a child’s-eye view throughout, Asensio captures how challenging it can be to make sense of the world around you when you’re just 8 years old and beginning to understand that grownups don’t have all the right answers.
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Part mother-daughter comedy, part grief drama, part generational clash, and part travelogue, writer/director Lilian T. Mehrel’s charming, poignant Honeyjoon tells the story of two women in mourning whose complicated feelings — for themselves, for each other, and for the loved one they’ve lost — must be sorted out before they can move forward. The fact that it’s all happening while they’re in the gorgeous Azores Islands both helps and hinders their journey.
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