A virxe roxa (2021)

After Winter Comes Spring

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to reflect on their life choices, the sacrifices they've made, and their place in the world. Despite everything, hope persists.

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth

The compelling story of an extraordinary woman's journey from her birth in a paper thin shack in the cotton fields of Georgia to her recognition as a key writer of the twentieth Century.Walker made history as the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple.

Bloodroot

Douglas Tirola’s latest documentary traces the evolution of feminism through the lives of two exceptional women, Noel and Selma, who came of age in the ’50s when women were relegated to the roles of wives and mothers. During the height of the women’s movement, Noel, a former teen model and Playboy bunny, meets and falls in love with Selma, a tough, outspoken radical feminist. Both women choose to leave their comfortable, yet unsatisfying marriages and children to come out as lesbians. The two share a love of cooking and gardening and, in the ’70s, open Bloodroot, the first vegetarian collective restaurant and bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By interspersing archival footage and clips from The Stepford Wives, Tirola affectionately chronicles the cultural shifts of the last 40 years as Noel and Selma attempt to keep Bloodroot open as an indispensable gathering spot for progressive women.

Let Us Be Seen

How do feminist and queer identities operate in contemporary Belfast? Let Us Be Seen is a documentary film that presents the work and ideas of individuals on the ground in Belfast, who have campaigned tirelessly for change and continue to do so. On 21st October 2019, abortion was decriminalised and same-sex marriage legalised in Northern Ireland. This important law change however has shed light on more nuanced barriers facing people locally.

Kathleen Shannon: On Film, Feminism & Other Dreams

With quiet intelligence and wry humour, retired documentary filmmaker Kathleen Shannon takes us through the arc of her life and career. Beginning with childhood, moving through her formative years, to her overwhelming desire to give women a chance to tell their stories, this film paints a vibrant portrait of one woman who blazed the way. It's a story of struggle, persistence, and success… and of course, of the NFB's Studio D.

Beauvoir, l'aventure d'être soi

Plot unavailable

Let the Canary Sing

A chronicle of Cyndi Lauper's meteoric ascent to stardom and her profound impact on generations through her music, ever-evolving punk style, unwavering feminism and tireless advocacy. This documentary takes the audience on an engaging exploration of a renowned and pioneering artist who has left a remarkable legacy with her art.

Dead Gay Men and Living Lesbians

As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.

Regarding Susan Sontag

An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

Boobs

A witty, forthright dive into the wonderful world of boobs by singer and filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey - from enhanced boobs to 'free the nipple', bras, Baywatch, and the stars of reality TV.

This is What a Feminist Sounds Like

This is What a Feminist Sounds Like is the story of 80 year old social activist Pat Noonan and it is a guided tour of the burgeoning of woman's rights and gender equality in North America during the twentieth century, set in the small automotive town of Windsor, Ontario.

Ouaga Girls

A group of young women from Ouagadougou study at a girl school to become auto mechanics. The classmates become their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, all while they are going through the life changing transition into becoming adults in a country boiling with political changes. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.

Those Who Care

Since the cult success of Merci Patron!, activist/journalist/filmmaker François Ruffin has become an MP. Here, he attempts to table a law aimed at upholding the rights of what in Quebec are known as caregivers, and shows us in passing how a law whose need seems patently obvious is put together, debated, voted on and . . . dies on the battleground of French politics. A stirring documentary about social injustice that somehow manages to make us bust a gut laughing as we rage with indignation. And also cry at the beauty of it all, thanks to the director’s humanist sensibility and a deft play between reality and fiction.

Black Women, Sexual Politics and the Revolution

Focuses on sexual equality in the Black community.

Hidden Eden

Exploring the concept of the Ecology of Emotions, this musical film portrays an inner journey through the secret garden of creativity put into frame by the nature of Iceland. Hidden Eden is a metaphor for our inner secret garden of creativity. This project bloomed during an art residency in Iceland, sparked by conversations around our shared philosophies on voice and emotional connection. The nature of Iceland inspired us to make the connection on how the landscape reflects the emotional states of creativity and how it helps manage the homeostasis of our inner emotional landscapes. This exchange between emotion and the landscape opens a space for healing. Creativity provides us with the tools to access a garden of our authentic being, nourishing and balancing us. Allowing ourselves to explore the spectrum of our emotions through the lens of our relationship with the Earth invites others to do the same. The creative process can affect our well being and is a key to human evolution.

Four Verses of Self Pleasure

Seven women and one non binary person share their personal experiences with masturbation through short anecdotes and a revolutionary washing machine.

L7: Pretend We're Dead

A real time journey witnessing the rise, fall, and ultimate redemption of the fierce feminist pioneers of American grunge punk: L7.

Play Your Gender

Juno Award-winning musician Kinnie Starr is on a quest to find out why only 5% of music producers are women even though many of the most bankable pop stars are female. What does it take for a woman to make it in music?

Bontok, Rapeless

Two Filipina victims of sexual abuse search the truth behind the finding of a renowned anthropologist: that merely a few generations ago, the Bontok Igorot lived in what seems an unthinkable utopia—a rape-less society.

Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

A Nepali mountaineer risks everything on a record-breaking Mount Everest climb to secure a brighter future for her daughters.

Silvana

A documentary about the Swedish rapper and artist Silvana Imam.

Me Time

In this documentary, 6 protagonists tell their personal experiences of abortion and sterilization, from unplanned pregnancy to a happy mother and vice versa from the wanted child to regretting motherhood.

Bertha Lutz: Women and the U.N. Charter

BERTHA LUTZ: WOMEN AND THE U.N. CHARTER reveals the important and unknown role of a Brazilian biologist and feminist in ensuring that gender issues were addressed at the basis of the United Nations.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché

The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey through her mother's archives in this intimate documentary.

Jane Fonda in Five Acts

Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she’s done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman’s singular journey.

Moments of Resistance

Widerstandsmomente (Moments of Resistance) carries voices, writings, and objects from the anti-Nazi resistance into the present. Politically engaged women of today respond to historical resistance and make links to current events. A line is drawn from what was before and what is today to what might be: a society based on solidarity without discrimination or exclusion.

Behind the Burly Q

Dive into more than a century of decadence with this tantalizing look at the evolution of burlesque. Cabaret star Leslie Zemeckis traces the art form from vaudeville-style variety show through its extinction and contemporary rebirth. Vintage photos, film clips and ads illustrate burlesque's resilient history and how the public's sexual appetite kept it alive amid moral and legal ado.

Slut or Nut: The Diary of a Rape Trial

York University alumni Mandi Gray is forced to grapple with a university administration, legal system and police force unwilling to take seriously her report of rape by a fellow PhD student.

Action Directe

French powerhouse climber Mélissa Le Nevé tries to become the first woman to traverse Action Directe, one of the most revered and challenging routes in the sport.

Jodie Foster, Hollywood Under the Skin

From her precocious status as a sex symbol to her consecration as a filmmaker, Jodie Foster's story is about a feminist struggle, albeit atypical, fought on and off the screen. This film sets out to retrace her remarkable journey within the Hollywood industry.

My Body, My Rules

Far from the dictates of current female beauty, MBMR focuses on these other bodies, those who take up space, those that stain, biters, those who devour, those who enjoy as they wish, those age and those who are self-transformed, those who are free and wild. Eight people will reveal the magic,cruel, sensuel, powerful relationship they have with their own bodies.The adventure of the film is multiple: the objective is to give voice and images to women whose body or sexuality is seen as non-standard, unseen or without speaking. The film will highlight possible resistance through an intimate portrait gallery, collective experimentations, tantra, exchange of fluids and knowledge, rituals… A strong political and feminist manifest about body politics, female sexuality and its representation, as well as about diversity and various forms of sexual desire.

Pin-Up, the Revenge of a Sex Symbol

The pin-up is not just a pretty young woman, not so much dressed and fantasized. This popular American icon would even become a symbol of feminine claims. As soon as we pronounce the word "Pin-up", it's an erotic and retro cliché that comes to mind. We imagine a beautiful ingenue in light clothes looking at us with a smile, endless legs and sexy underwear to guess the curve of a buttock. This short-dressed girl who looks at us in the corner and smiles at us frankly, is an erotic icon.

Revolution, Riot Grrrl Style

Today, we see a new style of feminism springing up everywhere - young, provocative and radical. To get their message across, these women have decided to rely on rock music! While the Pussy Riot shock Russia and fascinate the West, the concerts of Peaches or Grimes are sold out, while artists such as Kathleen Hanna make their comeback to remind us that it all began in 1990 in some backwater of the United States. The RIOT GRRRLS revolutionized rock and inspired entire generations of young artists around the world. This film will explore today s feminist scene while revisiting the little known history of this revolution that shook the early 90s.

Musings Of A Mechatronic Mistress

In a world where technology and humanity intertwine, Tiffany, a self-aware feminist "sex robot", embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Conversing with leading experts, Tiffany confronts the issues that have shaped her design and asks about queerness concerning sex tech.

Johanna Dohnal - Visionary of Feminism

Johanna Dohnal, whose political career spans three decades, was one of the very first explicitly feminist politicians in Europe. As a member of the Austrian socialist government and the first Austrian minister for Women’s Affairs from 1990 to 1994, Dohnal was responsible for founding Austria’s first women’s refuge as well as criminalizing of marital rape. Yet her legacy remains yet to be discovered and re-examined. DIE DOHNAL makes a first step, and it makes Dohnal come alive.

The Hunting Ground

A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.

Miss Representation

The film MISS REPRESENTATION exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. Explores the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media's limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths.

My Name is Clitoris

This documentary film is a dialogue between young women about female sexuality. Addressing the subject with freedom, courage and humor, they share their stories and experiences with the desire to change the world around them and to assert their right as women to an informed sexual education, free of constraints and taboos.

Independent Miss Craigie

Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.

Repense o Elogio

A documentary that proposes a conversation about the way children are praised. While girls are often praised solely for their appearance, boys can receive compliments by highlighting their skills. "Rethink the Praise" reflects on the power of words and culture that has brought an imbalance in the way we commend our boys and girls.

1979: Big Bang of the Present

Deng Xiaoping's economic and political opening in China. Margaret Thatcher's extreme economic measures in the United Kingdom. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran. Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland. Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Iraq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The nuclear accident at the Harrisburg power plant and the birth of ecological activism. The year 1979, the beginning of the future.

Yours in Sisterhood

What might be revealed in the process of inviting strangers to act out and respond to 1970s feminism forty years later? Between 2015 and 2017, hundreds of strangers in communities all over the US were invited to read aloud and respond to letters from the 70s sent to the editor of Ms. Magazine–the first mainstream feminist magazine in the US. The intimate, provocative, and sometimes heartbreaking conversations that emerge from these spontaneous performances make us think critically about the past, present, and future of feminism.