Female Film Critics 24/375
Ostensibly about the power of unions and workers uniting for better wages and improved job conditions in the microcosm of New York City, Union Town truly creates empathy and even admiration for the people who keep the Big Apple and America moving, one delivery at a time.
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A Good Little Soldier raises all the familiar questions about ambition and corporate culture, as well as the sacrifices – especially by women – for their careers. The challenge of balancing work and home life is real, and it is refreshing to see a film about a woman who doesn’t have it all figured out. Alba Rohrwacher gives a commendable performance as a middle manager in the otherwise lethargic workplace drama from Stéphane Brizé. While the themes in A Good Little Soldier are as literal and blunt as they come, it is an overall quiet and subtle drama.
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Newcomer Sneha Kumari is fiery and magnetic as teenage Robin Hood-style outlaw Phoolan Devi in Phoolan, a biographical drama focusing on forty-eight hours where the future Indian politician and two colleagues struggled to evade capture during the siege of a tiny village. Inspired by Devi’s 1996 autobiography, Phoolan fills in the early years of India’s “Bandit Queen,” who in the film takes on a leadership role in an armed gang that initially kidnaps her. Having learned to shoot, she attacks rapists and brutal landowners, returning deeds for property to the lower castes, who cheer her for her mercy. The film opens as seventeen-year-old Devi hides her hair under a turban, scurrying with two colleagues away from police trying to flush them out of hiding. She’s wanted for killing at least twenty men, and thousands trying to capture her are told her gang is agile, like dragonflies. She’s seven feet tall. She’ll castrate you before killing you. (That much, at least, is true.) Phoolan is an effective contained thriller that serves as an intriguing introduction to a fascinating woman.
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Smudge the Blades, which earned writer-director Cody Lightning a “Best Canadian Discovery” award from the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, is not the type of sports film where the down-on-his-luck coach gets a second chance, inspiring a team of scrappy underdogs in the process. Rather, it’s about finding a precious space that validates one’s worth, even if no one calls it that. Smudge the Blades builds to a championship hockey game, but it’s down-to-earth in its ambivalence about what happens to the teams afterward. There’s more to life for a lot of these people than hockey, but hockey also is a haven, offering seconds of glory but often just a way to fight through everything else.
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Filmmaker Ghasideh Golmakani was born in Tehran but moved to Paris where she completed her PhD with a dissertation entitled The Struggle of Iranian Women Filmmakers Before and After the Revolution. She did not want to examine that struggle from afar, so she returned to Iran where she made shorts, documentaries and behind the scenes films for other directors. Her short fiction films focus often focus on violence experienced by women in Iran. Head to Head marks her narrative feature debut although it feels very much like a documentary in how it addresses women’s issues. Head to Head marks her narrative feature debut although it feels very much like a documentary in how it addresses women’s issues.
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one of a handful of women in the documentary Cheyenne driven to compete at riding wild broncos on the rodeo circuit after the sport excluded them for roughly a century. Debuting at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, the film builds to the final competition at Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming—the end-of-season rodeo billed as “the Daddy of them all.”
Directed by Taimi Arvidson, Cheyenne covers a smattering of women’s rodeo history through historical footage but largely focuses on four American competitors and their coach, Daryl. There’s no crying in the arena, he warns, calling it “a bad image for everybody.” Anyone flung to the dirt needs to walk it off with a wave and a smile.
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In Children Untold, filmmaker Miwa Nishikawa focuses her attention on postwar Japan and a 12-year-old orphan Kotoko who’s trying to survive after the devastating March, 1945, US firebombing of Tokyo. The film relentlessly depicts horrific conditions. Kotoko faces tragedy, hardship and bad luck at every turn. The only relief from grief and loss comes from brief interludes of music and the friendship she forms with orphan boys. Children Untold is deeply compassionate and urges us to look at Kotoko’s story not as something from the past but rather as a reminder of how war and its aftermath continues to impact innocent victims like children today.
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Moving from Hong Kong to Vancouver on the arm of a rich husband, Yin thought she’d landed the fairy tale. But when her husband’s not home for almost six months and her company is mostly a chauffeur and a similarly abandoned trophy wife, this former dancer discovers how to forge a new path in Whatcha Want. Director Mina Shum (Murdoch Mysteries), Whatcha Want layers in character beats about Yin, who danced as a child and now can’t help but move with her earbuds, even walking on the sidewalk. She soon discovers a hip-hop dance troupe near her apartment, where Penny (choreographer Helen Dang), the supportive leader, encourages her to pursue resuming her studies in dance.
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There’s nothing like traveling together to highlight the fractures in a relationship. The Italian drama Idda, set against the backdrop of a hike to the summit of Sicily’s Mount Etna, brings together two young women whose friendship of years past doesn’t quite translate to where they are now in life. The two had planned to climb the active volcano, locally called Idda, after Adele’s mother died two years prior, but Sofia didn’t follow through at the time. That resentment sits between them, along with a secret that Sofia’s not ready to share, ignoring phone calls and messages.
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Happiness comes in many forms, and what we dream will bring us a true state of happiness isn’t always what ultimately makes us feel fulfilled. It’s a lesson Kitty learns in Happily Ever After, the new drama from writer-director Feng-I Fiona Roan.
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