A recent dip in female-led theatrical releases in the UK - back to 2018 levels of 26% reminds us that our work is far from over; that we cannot be complacent.
Below you can read about the research we conduct into gender representation in film and the wider industry, tracking the release landscape to present an accurate picture of investment in films by filmmakers of marginalised genders.
Here you can also find out about news and opportunities at Reclaim The Frame, along with curated film recommendations, filmmaker interviews, and creative responses.
In an assured and beautifully crafted feature debut, Erica Tremblay's FANCY DANCE sheds light on the strength and resilience of Indigenous women who hold their communities together through both joyful and tragic times.
Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has cared for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. At the risk of Jax losing custody to Roki’s grandfather, Frank (Shea Whigham), the pair hit the road and scour the backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow. What begins as a search gradually turns into a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonised world while at the mercy of a failed justice system.
#ReclaimTheFrame with a post-screening discussion with Director Erica Tremblay and our Head of Audience Engagement Aashna Thakkar:
HOME, Manchester - Friday 28 June, 17:40
- Thursday 4 July, 17:40
Pàlàs Cinema, Galway - Saturday 29 June, 18:15
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle - Sunday 30 June, 18:30
Hyde Park Picturehouse - Monday 1 July, 17:30 - Thursday 4 July, 20:15
Storyhouse, Chester - Sunday 7 July, 16:00
Other screenings in a #ReclaimTheFrame partner cinemas near you from TODAY:
FANCY DANCE will be screened with descriptive subtitles, and optional audio description is available.
You can find out more about the venue’s accessibility by visiting their website.
If you have any questions about the access provision for this event, please email charlie@reclaimtheframe.org
If ticket pricing is a barrier, please get in touch as we have limited free tickets that we can offer.
Our Director Melanie Iredale spent a sunny Cannes in a dark cinema last week (with thanks to support from Film Hub London), and we’re excited to share with you her #ReclaimTheFrame recommendations - reporting back on 7 of the titles (co)written and (co)directed by women, and focusing on films that premiered in the second week of the festival.
Disappointingly, though not surprisingly, only 4 of 22 titles in competition, 6 of 18 nominated for the Un Certain Regard, and 19% of the overall selection at Cannes were directed by women. According to data from Le Collectif 5050 – a fellow cine-campaigning organisation, in France with whom we met while at the festival – only 5.2% of films in Competition at Cannes since its creation have been directed by women.
That said, all the more reason to highlight those titles coming to the UK – or which we hope find a home in cinemas here – and including those that got less red carpet and industry attention.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT written & directed by Payal Kapadia. India, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy 2024.
First up, starting with the Grand Prix-winning ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT by Payal Kapadia. The first film from India to compete at Cannes in 30 years, and the first Indian woman director to compete full stop. Kapadia’s first feature, the stunning documentary A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING, which won the Camera d’Or in 2021, sadly only got a very limited release in the UK. Kapadia’s latest already looks set to reach the audiences here it deserves. This is the story of 3 working class nurses of different generations, based in Mumbai, all of whom, between life and work, have dedicated their lives to the service of others, and each decide to embark on their own journey. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is a luminous film, a story of friendship and emancipation, told with gentleness and with the same humanity offered by its lead characters.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT has been picked up by BFI for theatrical distribution in the UK.
THE SUBSTANCE written & directed by Coralie Fargeat. USA, UK, France 2024.
Also competing for the Palm d’Or, and taking home the prize for Best Screenplay is THE SUBSTANCE – a feminist body horror, and subversive take on the screen industry’s damnation of ageing women. Demi Moore stars as a Hollywood actress turned Jane Fonda-styled TV fitness presenter who is unceremoniously dumped from her slot when she turns 50. Enter ‘the substance’ which offers a chance to generate a younger, ‘more beautiful, more perfect’ double. Not unlike DEATH BECOMES HER – just as comic and as camp but with more gore - THE SUBSTANCE explores not only impossible beauty standards but also the way in which patriarchy pits women against each other in the fight for survival.
Reclaim The Frame supported Fargeat’s previous feature, REVENGE, and we look forward to seeing THE SUBSTANCE reach UK cinemas via MUBI.
SANTOSH written & directed by Sandhya Suri. UK 2024
From British Indian (Darlington raised) first-time feature director Sandhya Suri and featuring a largely Indian cast and crew comes SANTOSH – a compelling debut exploring casteism and misogyny in the Indian police force. The story centres on Santosh, newly widowed, who through a government scheme inherits her husband’s role as Constable, which is her only means of being entitled to financial support. When a low caste Dalit girl is found dead, Santosh is pulled into the investigation, and into the brutality of the law enforcement system of which she is now a part. A powerful thriller with its lead character complexly written and performed.
SANTOSH is represented by Mk2 Sales with no news of UK distribution as yet.
SEPTEMBER SAYS written & directed by Ariane Labed. UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Greece 2024.
Another UK co-production, competing for the Un Certain Regard. Based on a novel called ‘Sisters’ by Daisy Johnson, Ariane Labed’s adaptation makes for a tense watch – a study of adolescence and bullying, through the characters of two interdependent sisters born less than a year apart: September (the title referring to her frequent demands of “September says… “) and July (always “silly July”). When September is suspended from school, July begins to explore her own individuality. Formerly an actor, known for ATTENBERG, SEPTEMBER SAYS marks a confident debut for Labad, with impressively in-sync performances from Mia Tharia and Pascale Kann as the sisters and by Rakhee Thakrar as their mother trying to assert her own independence.
SEPTEMBER SAYS is represented by Match Factory with no news of UK distribution as yet.
GOOD ONE written & directed by India Donaldson. USA 2024.
In Director’s Fortnight, and previously premiered at Sundance, we adored GOOD ONE – a beautifully written story of a young woman’s backpacking trip with her father and his best friend. 17 year old Sam, wise beyond her years, helps to mediate the clashes of egos between her elders. GOOD ONE assuredly takes its time in creating the understated vulnerability in its central character, and in building bonds only for trust to be broken when a line is crossed. A confident commentary on generational differences and gendered experiences, complete with luscious cinematography of the Catskill Mountains.
GOOD ONE is represented by Visit Films with no news of UK distribution as yet.
EAT THE NIGHT written & directed by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. France 2024.
Also in Director’s Fortnight, and up for the Queer Palm, is EAT THE NIGHT. An ambitious project, pitched as a drug-fuelled thriller, but one that works best in simpler terms: as a deeply tender story about a brother-sister relationship, and at best in what is left unsaid between them. Pablo and Apolline have grown up together playing Darknoon, an online fantasy video game - a shared past time which is threatened both by the impending death of the game and by Pablo’s neglect of his sister in favour of his new boyfriend, Night. Directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel deftly transport us between these two worlds: between its fascinating virtual universe and the very nihilistic everyday life in which the protagonists’ struggle.
EAT THE NIGHT is represented by Mk2 Sales with no news of UK distribution as yet.
THE FALLING SKY directed by Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha & Eryk Rocha. Brazil, Italy, France 2024.
“Here I am, letting myself be filmed… Are you really going to be our allies?"
An immersive documentary, opening with a seven minute un-cut scene in which we watch a group of Indigenous people striding towards the camera, from one part of the Amazon to another, to defend their land from the miners who threaten it. Titled after a book of the same name, by shaman Davi Kopenawa, inspired by the reahu ritual, a collective ceremony to hold up the sky, THE FALLING SKY amplifies the voices of the Yanonami people. Along with scenes in which we’re entranced in their everyday lives, traditions and struggles are sections in which they’re interviewed direct to camera - sections for which as a white audience member - “commodity people” - felt to be powerfully confronted with and reminded of our complicity in the killing and poisoning of their land.
Thanks go to Film Hub London for supporting our costs to go to Cannes.
Written response by Isra Al Kassi
A look at the tell-tale cinematic signs of feigning a virginity in Elaha
If American teenage films are anything to go after the “losing of” or “ridding of” or are actively sought out by men while women are more mindful of the preservation of what’s deemed as both their innocence and their value.
Milena Aboyan debut feature film Elaha’s original synopsis reads: Elaha, 22, believes she must restore her supposed innocence before she weds. A surgeon could reconstruct her hymen but she cannot afford such an operation. She asks herself: why does she have to be a virgin anyway, and for whom?
In this context virginity takes on the word ‘innocence’ - instantly negated by the ‘supposed’. As an audience we are told that virginity isn’t where the film or filmmaker places the value, but that the pressures in the community feature is something so real it affects the protagonist. We are to understand it as a value placed by someone else; if being a virgin is to be innocent then to get rid of that innocence is to be damaged, impure and devalued.
The experience of ‘the first time’ in cinema aims to set the tone for the rest of the character’s journey. Whether it be everything they dreamt of, or a horrendous experience. From the coercive like Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble, 1999) to the pact making à la American Pie (Paul Weitz, 1999).
As I continue to trip on the words to use, left with phrases like ‘popping cherry’, and ‘losing’ or ‘taking’ we’re already engaging in a futile discussion on ownership and conquest. Where are the terms for pleasure, self-expression, love, and exploration for women? What language and words do we have for virginity or a first sexual encounter?
Constructing a virginity in cinema is a reflection of the misconceptions and ignorance of real life. Equal parts sacred, and saved for preserving and simultaneously not for the choice of giving or losing to be up to the woman herself. What does it say about the high value we claim a woman’s virginity holds if it can crumble so quickly and easily?
As a society we seem to revel in the ‘is she or isn’t she?’ - it wasn’t that long ago (1981) that Princess Diana had to prove her virginity or the marriage to the then Prince, now King Charles. Her marriage to the future king depended on her virginity. There is nothing to say that Diana was inspected, but her word and her uncle’s public announcement confirming that she was a virgin were enough to seal the deal.
Other ways of telling are if someone has been married before, if they’ve had children or if they’ve been in long-term relationships. In Sex & The City (The Ick Factor, Season 6, Episode 14, 2014) when Miranda refuses a white wedding dress and asks for ‘nothing that says virgin’ for her nuptials she says: ‘I have a child; the jig is up.’ Of course cinema is the perfect place to look at the signs; and the aesthetic ques to go along with them.
Elaha’s secret is that she is not a virgin. We as an audience only know this from her desperate quest to reconstruct her virginity before her wedding to Nasim a mere weeks away. We know nothing of with who, or when, or the new favourite way to measure a woman’s purity: how many.
We never know Elaha as a virgin, this secrecy denies Elaha and audience of viewing sex as a rite of passage. This is not a teenage movie, nor is it a slapstick comedy about people in their 40s who ‘missed the boat’ and must now play catch up. This is a film about honouring one’s culture, loving one’s family and respecting one’s custom while also attempting to figure out what she wants and if she also places the same value on her virginity as those around her.
Writer Kim Hudson developed an entire method called The Virgin’s Promise for screenwriting which aimed to subvert the hero’s journey by focusing on ‘Feminine Creative, Spiritual, and Sexual Awakening’ - the word ‘Virgin’ here relates not to a woman’s sexual experience but of domesticity as her starting point before embarking on her journey. In a way this applies to Elaha.
While there is an emphasis on the Kurdish culture which Elaha comes from and is deeply embedded in in every facet of her life. The two outlets for her non-kurdish life is her course, one where her teacher tries to get involved in her personal life as a saviour of sorts. The second outlet is a male German peer who dropped out of the course but who Elaha is drawn to, exploring a different side of her domesticity within the walls of his flat and on walks with his dog.
Writer and director Aboyan credits VirginiaCare (blood capsules to be inserted before penetration to mimic the breaking of a hymen) and hymen reconstructive surgery as inspiration behind the story and says: It is my opinion that for as long as these patriarchal structures do not change, the women affected have no other choice than to have their “virginity” reconstructed.
The concept of virginity in film is about a before and an after, and the idea that the significance of the first time is the same across the board, for all women. On the most basic level after sex there’s nothing but pain, shame and blood. The act, and preservation is then reduced to this elusive hymen; one which may tear when cycling, doing sports, using a tampon or during intercourse. This is how the physical elements of sexual intercourse run the risk of being led by fables.
Elaha engages in the same tropes which she starts to resent. Placing value on bleeding on her wedding night and going to great lengths to restore her hymen, or to at least fake its tear.
In cinema the stages of losing one’s virginity are split into the planning, the act and the aftermath.
Unfortunately in some cases, like in Elaha: the aftermath involves fear, and a painful surgery to cover her tracks and transgression.
In Real Women Have Curves ( Patricia Cardoso, 2002) after Ana (America Ferrera) loses her virginity, her mother Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) somehow knows that her daughter is no longer a virgin. This is either due to being incredibly insightful and that there were clear signs; maybe her daughter started to emit a glow which was closely linked to a new womanhood; or the mother is just paranoid.
The question isn’t so much about whether Elaha will get away with it on her wedding night, but if it’s even possible to consider so many people, carry all of that responsibility, and stay true to herself, her wishes and sexuality.
Isra Al Kassi (she/her) has a background in events management and community spaces and cinemas. She is the co-founder of T A P E Collective and has curated for London Short Film Festival, BFI Southbank and Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Isra has more recently worked with BIFA, Inclusive Cinema, Independent Film Trust and London Film Festival, Habibi Collective and Shasha with a focus on audience development and outreach.
#ReclaimTheFrame with ELAHA in a cinema near you.
